How To Test Watercolor Paper | Watercolor 101

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[EveBolt]

Oh my!! I love your template!! I always go onto new paper and "wing it", but I think I'll make time to do this from now on. Even in new sketchbooks! No more bad surprises, haha! Thanks Sade!

[InLiquidColor]

Thanks for the mention Sade! Beautiful chart as per usual with super useful information. I hope you are feeling better!

[NeoMC]

I absolutely love this video! Too often have I rushed into a piece on a new type of paper, only to rip up my paper by masking or not getting the blending effects that I wanted.
The paper having some flaws was also really informative, though I do wonder what the results of this test would be on your favourite paper.

[daftdabbler]

What a great tutorial. I don't know if I have the patience to do *all* those tests, but you gave a lot of information in an easy to follow format. Thank you!

[chuhsiao]

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you :)

[alrunmitgemalt]

Sadie, your videos are extremely helpful - I bought a "Hahnemühle Selection" pack a while ago and wondered how best to try this out. Thanks for sharing your ideas in such a helpful, structured way!

[stabbytron]

This video is very useful, so thanks so much for that! I just started working with watercolors a few months ago and have been gradually working my way up in quality of materials because I started with the cheapest products to get my feet wet. However, now that I am becoming comfortable with the medium and really committing to it, I am ready to invest more in it. However, I guess maybe because I am less experienced or not planning well, I can't really see where and how I can make use of masking fluid. But YouTube artists seem to use it a lot, so it must be important for creating great art! I don't want to buy it until I know I'll find it useful so I wondered if you have any insight into that. Also, as someone who has only used the cheap paints, I wonder what is the difference/significance between staining and non-staining paints, and also the varying levels of opacity. As a learner, I'm sure it's possible I won't even be able to tell one from the other just by looking so I am curious to know what this means to an experienced artist and why it might matter to them. Thanks again for your very informative videos!

[MeowMeowKapow]

I have a bunch of different papers that I wanted to test, but I couldn’t really decide on everything I wanted to test. Lo and behold, you’ve made an INCREDIBLE video and template to help with that, when I eventually get the time!

My favorite paper right now is cheap Joe’s jilamanjaro papers, but I also really like the bee paper watercolor journal!

I have question about backflows/cauliflowers-I don’t know what that means or what they look like! You mentioned you used a lot of water specifically for it, do you mean when the paper is ultra wet and warps in ways that make little puddles of dense pigment?

Also, I’m so bad at edge softening. =>.<= i always use too much liquid and end up creating white parts accidentally. Watching you almost seamlessly make that beautiful circle was like magic!!

[theAnnek]

Great video. Thank you for sharing! <3

[blessedwhitney]

If you have not already, can you please do a tutorial on the softening technique? I've seen other artists use it as well, but I seem to either get back runs or lifting, not the nice middle ground.

[avajarvisart]

I loved this video (as well as your SkillShare class on mixing watercolors, which I thought was among the better done classes on that site). I went ahead and did my own tests on the Strathmore 500 series (which, unlike the 400 and lower-numbered series, are 100% cotton rag instead of cellulose), both cold press and hot press.

I don't yet have Lunar Black, but I did have Viridian to do the granulation tests with. (It's a Daniel Smith Viridian, so granulates quite a bit, though not as much as I've seen of Lunar Black swatches).

Here are my own testing results—Strathmore's papers have sides with different properties as well! They're not even that subtle of a difference. I also added some boxes to test technical pens and brush pens—they're very affected by paper grain and sizing as well.


I'll be testing Arches and probably the Pentalic AquaJournal papers soon.

(The blog there is very new, I just started it after trying out several other blogging sites for a year. Blogger seems to have gotten a lot better from what I recalled, and it makes me the happiest thus far, and also is free.)

[gwensimmons_gigi]

Thanks Sadie! My favorite, reasonably priced, everyday paper is Canson’s Moulin du Roy. Are you planning to test that brand sometime in the future?? 😘👍🏾

[UrraSergio]

I'm going to make a small campaign to reach a thousand.