yeah a regular notebook is fairly cheap here too... the thing is, I use special pads, they come in 25-50 sheet pads and it's very clean, bright white paper with a VERY, VERY fine grain to it. It's also an unusual size 9x13" pages. Unfortunately... I usually go through about 2-4 pages per sketch just because I mess up a lot, and the fine grain paper is hard to erase, but I get a much, much higher quality appearance with the ink and it scans better than regular paper. The ink is the real killer tho... that stuff costs a lot because to get good quality inks for what I do, I'd have to drop almost $100 for a single set of pens. I DON'T DO THAT!!! I pay $20 for some lesser quality inks, and try to compensate by using better quality paper and working with much lighter, more careful penning.