Arches Watercolor Block, Cold Press 9X12

Do yourself a favor. If you really want to paint watercolor, buy quality products. Believe it or not, paper can have more of an effect on your painting than paint (except for crappy, no-name, cheap paint). And a watercolor block is SO much easier to work with than a single sheet of paper. Especially if you travel, paint outdoors, dont always have access to your GatorFoam Board. You will be much happier with your results, using Arches paper.

Would be the perfect paper except for the black binding holding the pad together. you get an incredibly annoying scraggly plastic black border that you cannot remove unless you trim the edge of the paper... Otherwise I love the paper.

BEST watercolor paper on the market, hands down.

Good quality and great price

this is the best paper out there, for watercoloring, on a block.

Watercolor paper just doesnt get better than arches. The make THE highest quality paper that I have ever used, and I will need no other brand. The cold press paper is bumpy in comparison to the hot press and creates more muted tones from the paints. I like to use this for darker subject matter. It is still very easy to draw on with pencils and Micron pens. I also enjoy using water soluble sketch pencils with this paper. This paper is definitely more expensive that the stuff I started out with on the big pad from the craft store. But it is worth the price if you are looking for professional appearance and presentation in your works. High quality paper like this is labor and time intensive. When you compare how watercolor paint looks on this paper to another brand there is HUGE difference in depth and color. It really feels like the aper does most of the work!

When you use cheap materials you get shoddy results. I have tried lots of paper and this is one of my favorites.

It definitely makes a difference to use quality paper.

Havent used it yet. But its exactly what my teacher told me to get.

How could any paper be better than Arches? This block is great as the paper does not need to be stretched and it can be used at anytime.