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About Leda Art Supply

Books named for the swan. Made in a quiet shop in Kirkland.

A small American company founded in 2015 by an artist and an attorney who couldn't find the sketchbook they wanted. So they made it. Then they kept making it.

The myth

Leda. The swan. A name about what an artist's work outlasts.

Leda was an Aetolian princess of Greek myth. Zeus took the form of a swan to meet her, and from their union came Helen of Troy and the twin stars Castor and Pollux — beauty, devotion, and a story old enough to outlive the people who first told it.

We took her name because that's what we wanted from a sketchbook: an object that carries forward what an artist makes, longer than the hand that made it. The books are named for figures from the same family — the Odyssey, Mother Leda, Atlas the Titan, Phoebe the Titaness. The mark on every cover is her swan.

The origin

It started because the books we wanted didn't exist yet.

For thirty years, GJ and Teresa Gillespie traveled with sketchbooks. They sketched in cathedrals, on trains, on the steps of buildings older than any country either of them had lived in. By the late 2000s they had filled hundreds of books — which is when they started to notice the books themselves were the problem.

Pages bled. Bindings split open. Covers warped in humidity. The most-loved sketchbooks on the market — the ones every artist had heard of — were not built to be drawn in for keeps. So GJ, an art-historian-turned-painter, did what an art historian does: he started researching. Paper mills. Stitching counts. Cover materials. Cream tone versus white. He found the makers, sourced the paper, specified the binding, and prototyped the book they wished they could buy on the way home from a museum.

They launched the first one — the Leda Odyssey, 7 × 10 inches of cream 81-pound paper, sewn with thirteen stitches per signature, bound in soft PU faux-leather — out of Kirkland, Washington in 2015. Sold the first hundred to friends and to artists they admired. Then the next thousand. Then the next ninety-nine thousand. Today the books are in the hands of artists in six European countries, in Japan, and in the studios of more than a hundred thousand working artists.

None of the rest of the line — Atlas, Phoebe, Baby Leda, Olympian, Zeus — exists if the first one didn't survive a year of plein air. Every Leda book is, somewhere underneath, the same answer to the same complaint they heard in their own studios.

The founders

An artist and an attorney. Married thirty years.

Creative Director

GJ Gillespie

Painter, collage artist, and the eye behind every Leda book.

GJ is a working artist before he is a sketchbook maker. A retired college professor, he lives and paints in a 1928 farmhouse on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. His mixed-media collage work has appeared in more than 200 literary and art journals, on 19 journal covers, and earned more than two dozen exhibition awards from the Northwest Collage Society to the Museum of Northwest Art.

His artistic preoccupation, in his own words, is work that "evokes a sense of wonder, awe, and new perspectives of being." He cites Arshile Gorky and Turner among his influences. He thinks paper should hold up to whatever you put on it. He thinks a sketchbook should hold up to a year of being a sketchbook.

"The artists I admire tap feelings of awe that permit the viewer to experience new perspectives of being. We try to make a book worthy of that work."

See GJ's studio practice →

Co-founder

Teresa Gillespie

Attorney, former business school dean, the structure beneath the studio.

Teresa is the half of the partnership that turned a working artist's sketchbook obsession into a working business. A practicing attorney with an MBA and a tenure as Dean of a university business school, she handles the company's strategy, supply chain, customer service, and most of the difficult phone calls. She is also a watercolorist who carries a Leda everywhere she goes.

She'll tell you that hand-made drawings are better than photographs at remembering a place — that the hand notices what the camera misses, and the page saves it longer.

"Personally hand-made drawings are better than photographs or postcards. They bring back lasting travel memories — from a place a camera can't reach."

What we believe

Three things, plainly stated.

01 / Paper before everything

If the paper isn't right, nothing else is.

Cream 81 lb, 120 gsm, acid-free, lightly toothed. The paper is the only thing your hand actually touches. We start there. Everything else follows.

02 / Made for the road

A book that survives a year is a book worth filling.

Sewn 13-stitch binding, PU softcover, accordion pocket, elastic closure. Built for the bottom of a backpack, the back of a truck, a cathedral floor in Lisbon. Scuffs are part of the design.

03 / Made by artists

The person who designs the book draws in it.

Every change to a Leda book is reviewed by a working artist before it ships. We don't outsource the test. The book is wrong until GJ wants to use it.

The book itself

Specs you can feel through the cover.

Every Leda sketchbook is the same answer to the same complaint we heard in our own studios. The specs aren't decorations — they're consequences.

Cream 81 lb / 120 gsm paper: Warm cream tone flatters everything you draw on it. 120 gsm holds fountain pen, pencil, and light wash without ghosting. Acid-free and archival.
13 stitches per signature: Most softcover sketchbooks use two or three. Ours hold open across the spread and keep their backs through years of working over them.
PU faux-leather softcover: Better all-weather behavior than cloth-over-board, better aging than plastic, and we don't want to be in the leather supply chain.
Accordion back pocket & elastic closure: Tickets, pressed leaves, museum stubs, the napkin you sketched the bridge on. The pocket holds the things you'd forget otherwise.

Mission

Five percent of every dollar of profit goes to Art with Heart.

Art with Heart is a Seattle-based nonprofit that puts art-making into the hands of children navigating trauma. It's the work we wish we'd had access to as kids. Five percent of net profit, every year, no qualifications.

About Art with Heart

Our stance on AI-generated art

Books made for the artists who are still in the room.

Generative AI imagery has its place. The thing that happens between a person, a pen, and a piece of paper does not. We make books for the people doing the second one — the working artists who are still showing up to draw the world by hand. We will never use AI to generate the artwork on our covers, our marketing imagery, or the work of our brand ambassadors.

Read the full policy

In the press

What other people have said.

A small selection from a longer list.

"A premium sketchbook that travels well — the paper holds ink and light wash, and the binding genuinely lays flat."

New York Magazine · The Strategist

"One of the best sketchbooks for serious artists who are tired of the usual options."

My Modern Met · Best Sketchbooks of the Year

"A real differentiator is the 13-stitch binding. After a year of daily use, mine still cracks open at every page."

GeekWrapped · Editors' Pick

"What sets it apart is the cream paper — warm enough to flatter ink and graphite both, and toothed enough for everything short of a full watercolor wash."

Parka Blogs · In-Depth Review

"The Leda books have earned a place in my plein-air kit alongside Stillman & Birn and Hahnemühle."

Roz Wound Up · Sketchbook Review

"Beautifully designed, robustly made, and named for the right myth."

Creative Bloq · Best Sketchbooks 2026

100,000+

Books in artists' hands

4.7 ★

Across 600+ Amazon reviews

Countries we ship from

Of profits to Art with Heart

2015

Founded in Kirkland, WA