Strathmore400 Watercolour Hardbound 300gsm Paper Book, Cold-Pressed, 8.5 x 11 in, 24 Sheets, Ideal for Professionals & Students

I use this watercolour journal for my illustrations and I couldn't be more pleased by the quality. Strathmore are a great brand for paper and their watercolour paper is just perfect. Their thick GSM is perfect for washes of colour and the paper has very little buckling which is something vital when creating illustrations. When applying watercolour to the paper it more or less sits on top of the paper and dries rather than the paper soaking it in, meaning that if you make a mistake and the watercolour is fairly wet you can simply pick the colour up with a paper towel. The feel and texture to the book is great and gives a great touch to finished pieces as the texture can often be seen through washes. Binding of the journal seems quite strong so far as I've used it. The journal is a little pricey though so I would recommend using this if you work with watercolour a lot and your budget allows it. Edit: it's been almost a year since I bought this now and this journal is still up to par, as for binding it is still strong.

perfect for keeping my paintings safely..

Best paper for watercolor but overpriced

I bought this journal for watercolouring. I don't know what the pages are made of but they are not cotton. Although it is advertised as cold press, it is behaves more like hot press. I have learned to manipulate the paper somewhat and I've had a couple of reasonably successful paintings on it. If I wet the paper with water to paint wet on wet, the paper soaks it up like a sponge but when I apply more water and then paint, the pigment skates around the surface. What does this mean? I guess it means that the paper is absorbent but when you saturate it with water, the pigment then has nowhere to go. Tricky. It must be a question of getting it just right. All I know is I don't have this problem with my usual expensive paper.Sadly, the paper doesn't stand the rough treatment that my usual heavyweight 100% cotton does and that is a bit of a nuisance. I end up with bobbly bits on the page. I did a painting of raspberries and ice cream and it demanded a lot of patience but I got there.So there we have it.

The quality of the paper is amazing, it is thick and copes well with watercolor and gouache. The cover of the scrapbook as well is good quality so you can keep your art for a long time.

Great item

I'm sure it's a lovely sketchbook, however when I finally sat down to use it, I found it had been used before.Thankfully not too much so not worth returning but I would have expected this kind of use to be in the used category not supplied as new.