Jenna Rainey, one of our US ambassadors, shares her advice on the best watercolour paper from her own experience as a watercolour artist.
Jenna's signature vibrant loose-style florals, landscapes, and geometric designs are found in collaborations with brands like Blue Sky for Staples, Crate & Kids, Pixar, Lovevery, Toki Mats, Zola and more.
Jenna says, “I constantly get asked: “What is more important—quality paper, paint or brushes?” And you know what my answer is? Paper. Then the next question is: “Which is the best watercolour paper??”
“Paper is one of the biggest factors in the appearance of colours, how water and pigments pool, blend and dry and so much more. While working with great paint and brushes is highly recommended as well without a good surface to work on, painting can be dull, unenjoyable and frustrating.”
The Ultimate Guide to Watercolour Paper By Jenna Rainey
There are a few different criteria to look for when shopping for watercolour paper, from quality to texture, tinting and format.
Quality
Just like brushes and paint, there are two types of quality when it comes to watercolour paper: artist level and student level. Artist quality paper is also known as archival paper. It’s acid free, built to last and can be way more enjoyable when painting. If you’re just practicing and a beginner, you can absolutely get away with using student quality paper. Just keep in mind that it will become brittle over time and it won’t perform as well as the artist level paper.
Surface or texture
This aspect of watercolour paper is more subjective. There are three different types of textures that come with watercolour paper: hot-pressed, cold-pressed (my preference) and rough. Like I said, this one depends on your personal style of painting and preferred feel and I recommend checking out all three. For me, cold-pressed is the perfect in-between texture. It’s not too smooth like hot-pressed and not too rough like rough paper. It’s got a nice toothy texture that will help keep the pigment and water in place, but not too rough to the point where all of my strokes are looking dry and spotty. However, because I like to work with a decent amount of water and paint wet-in-wet quite often, my work looks completely different on hot-pressed and rough and yours may not!
Tinting
For the most part, all watercolour paper is either high white, white or cream. I prefer high white as it helps illuminate the transparent quality of watercolour pigments, but it’s also a nice contrast against the brighter, more vibrant colours I paint with. If you want a more subtle or natural look, you may want to go with an off-white or cream!
Format
When you go to an art supply store, you may notice there are a bunch of different types of formats for watercolour paper. There are blocks, pads, loose sheets and rolls. My preference is always blocks unless I’m wanting to paint something really large, then I’ll do loose sheets. The reason I don’t like working on pads of watercolour paper is because of the warping and buckling. Blocks of paper are glued down on the sides and help prevent this from happening. If you don’t purchase a pad, you’ll want to work on one sheet and tape it down on your table or some sort of working surface.
Our thanks to Jenna Rainey for sharing her advice,
originally posted on her blog.
Watch Jenna’s video where she shares her favourite watercolour painting supplies – brushes, paper, and pens.
Links
To learn more about St Cuthberts Mill papers visit
our website.
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