Here's a comparison of watercolour paper of different cotton content. The papers I've used are...
- Fluid (0%)
- Daler Rowney Aqua Fine (0%)
- Fabriano Studio (25%)
- Fabriano 5 (50%)
- Fabriano Artistico (100%)
- Arches (100%)
All are coldpress 300gsm watercolour paper.
These are the four tests that I did with all the paper.
- Creating a wet on wet wash that blends into the white of the paper
- Creating a colour blend
- Glazing
- Charging in a colour to a wet wash
Below are comparisons of the same test with different paper. High resolution scans are available for download ( Fluid | Daler Rowney Aquafine | Arches | Fabriano Studio | Fabriano 5 | Fabriano Artistico )
All the papers did well with the wet on wet wash that blends paint into the white of the paper so I'm not going to share those scans here. You can check out the high resolution scans yourself.
Colour blend tests
Fluid
Daler Rowney Aquafine
Fabriano Studio
Fabriano 5
Fabriano Artistico
Arches
The watercolour colour paper that has 0% and 25% cotton content did badly. The colour blends are not smooth, horizontal brush strokes can be seen, and water can be seen streaking down. Water tend to stay on the surface of these paper and these water will flow down to create the big streaks.
Watercolour paper that has 50% or 100% cotton did well. Colour blends are smooth. The paper absorbs the water and paint, and the paint can take its time to diffuse and blend.
Glazing
Fluid
Daler Rowney Aquafine
Fabriano Studio
Fabriano 5
Fabriano Artistico
Arches
For watercolour paper with no or low cotton content, brush strokes will have hard edges. You can see rougher edges with cotton watercolour paper such as the Fabriano 5, Fabriano Artistico and Arches. There's some rough edges with the Fabriano Studio as well but not as obvious compared to the cotton paper. The cotton paper absorbs water fast which makes the brush dry enough to create those rough edges.
If you paint slow or use a lot of water, you can still get hard edges on all the paper.
There's something interesting with the Fabriano Artistico paper. Notice the blue paint edges are rough against paper but as soon as it goes over the yellow paint, the edges become hard. The look can be quite distracting. As for Arches, the edges are rough whether it's on white paper or glazed over another colour.
Charging in
Fluid
Daler Rowney Aquafine
Fabriano Studio
Fabriano 5
Fabriano Artistico
Arches
Paint on watercolour paper with no cotton content do not move much. Once you charge in another colour onto a wet colour wash, it moves slightly and just stays there. This makes colour blending difficult.
For some reason, all the Fabriano watercolour papers have streaking lines at the soft edges. The most noticeable streaking lines are from Fabriano 5 and the least obvious from Fabriano Artistico. Streaking lines are quite distracting.
Arches perform the best. The colours are able to blend with soft edges.
Conclusion
I usually use paper with no cotton content to create my watercolour swatches. When it comes to painting, it takes a lot more work to create beautiful colour blends and soft edges.
The best paper is Arches. Performance is consistent and predictable. So there's a reason for it's high price.
Fabriano Artistico surprised me with the edge performance when glazing, and there are streaking lines (even though not that obvious) when charging in colours.
I'll continue to test other watercolour paper and add them to this page. It will be interesting to see how other papers perform.
