Earlier I wrote about these new journals I found in mid-2009 by a company called ecosystem.  I had purchased a couple of their gridded notebooks, and recently had decided to try out their art journal.  The art journal has the same durable coated soft cover that my gridded ecosystem journal has.  My first thoughts were that the paper was only thick enough to do pencil and ink sketches- and not anything that really required a lot of finishing or working, because the paper wouldn't hold up to lots of erasing, watercolor, acrylics or gouache. 

The current ecosystem art journal I am using has 120 pages (guess) of plain notebook paper with micro perforations.  This is sufficient for lots of in field thumbnails and brainstorming sessions where much of the work is thrown away for the one good idea that emerges from dozens of roughs.  Something that someone would probably not want to do on heavy card stock journals like the 80 page Moleskine art journal.  That's just my thinking, as I don't have money to spend on an 80 page moleskine art journal to fill high quality card stock with thumbnails and roughs when the pages are good enough for making nice finished pieces.

So, I did end up writing to ecosystemlife about art journals with heavier card stock paper.  They did reply that new art journals were in fact expected by mid summer!

Dear Raph,

Thanks for your interest in our ecosystem notebooks. You'll be happy to know that we will soon release a sketchbook format that has a beautiful, heavier paper stock than our traditional journals. These sketchbooks will be available in stores and online later this summer.

We hope you find an ecosystem sketchbook of your liking and would love to hear your feedback after using your new sketchbook.

Great news, as I am looking forward to comparing what they will offer to the moleskine pocket art journals that I use.

I am curious if they will change the binding for heavy paper, and if they will drop the micro-perforations.  I am also thinking the new paper will not be warm in color, which will be different from moleskine art journals.  I am fond of the warm card stock in moleskines.  In any case, I will pick one of these new ecosystem art journals up when I see one, and write about it.