Paper talk - cotton or cellulose?

A lot of people think that if you're a "real" watercolor artist you have to use super fancy expensive 100% cotton paper. And I want to explain why it's not actually the case.

Yeah, obviously cotton paper is very good (otherwise it won't be so pricey). But! it actually eats bright colors. You may remember that I told it in my DS video where I paint on Canson Heritage paper. 

How cotton works - it absorbs your paint and water pretty quickly so you don't have a lot of time to fix some mistakes. But the most obvious perks of using cotton is that it warps less and as I can say by my experiencs the color blendings came out more smooth and pretty.

Speaking about cellulose paper it gives you ways brighter colors, it's cheaper and it doesn't absorb your paint so quick so you can correct your mistakes even after the paint dries. Cool to hear, right? But yeah you may not get those smooth gradations like on cotton paper.

If you want me to recommend you some paper from both sides, here it is:

For cotton it's Moulin du Roy and Heritage from Canson (I liked Arches too but the texture killed all my liners, yeah, it's like drawing on a sandpaper), Saunders Waterford from St Cuthberts Mill (I use it for Jane illustrations) and Fabriano Artistico (it's that my fishes sketchbook is made of).

For cellulose it's definitely Canson Vidalon, I was very pleasantly surprised by this paper! All my hanbok series was drawn on in. I used to like Canson Montval too but lately I'm not so happy with it. I'm not sure if W&N Cotman paper is made of celllose but I can recommend it too. Canson XL Mix-media is great too, the paper with striped texture, but their XL Aquarelle disappointed me completely. Also I remember using the Hahnemühle Burgund paper a few years ago and it was quite nice, I think I have to buy a new pad of this paper to recollect my experience with it.

Also I like one paper that is 25% cotton, it's Fabriano Studio watercolor paper, but i can recommend you only 300gsm one (blue), recently I've bought a 200 gsm (wine red) and didn't like it, it's pretty much like Canson XL Aquarelle.

And I'm speaking only about cold pressed paper here, because it's the kind I use the most. I'll tell you about hot pressed/cold pressed/torchon paper next time if you're interested!

So yeah, I hope this post will help you with your paper struggles if you have any :D (if not - that's nice to hear!)