The choice of surface for your painting projects is incredibly important, as the different ingredients in different paint types, from watercolour to oils, and everything in between, necessitate a range of different surfaces - Artway have endeavoured to provide you with a range of options, depending on your paint medium.
For watercolour, most of our heavyweight cartridge papers (of at least 170gsm) can take a light wash - however, we would certainly recommend a dedicated watercolour paper, if watercolour painting is your primary focus. Cotton content is crucial here, both for texture and to minimise distortion of the painted surface when wet. To this end, we provide an italian-made 35% cotton paper in paper packs, pads and a spiral bound sketchbook - which conveniently also happen to be both vegan - containing no Gelatin - and eco friendly, being completely acid-free. The ‘35’ range is a ‘Cold-Pressed’ texture, which is the ‘medium’ watercolour paper grade, and makes it suitable for both large area washes and fine detail.
Consider also our new, handmade, 100% cotton, artisan watercolour-specific papers, again available as packs of paper in individual sheets or a range of unique sketchbooks - including the beautiful and unusual “concertina” note book, for extra wide panoramas or storyboarding.
For oil painting, a canvas is naturally your ideal surface - however, with a gesso preparation, both of our new heavyweight papers, Enviro Flat White Multi-Arte (250gsm) & the MRKZ range (240gsm) can accommodate oil paint. In addition to the rougher surface texture, both paper types can also hold a more varied set of mixed media, absorb water better, and maintain surface flatness due to the extra rigidity the heavyweight paper provides. Being a mixed media surface, the paper is very versatile - great for light watercolour use, gouache paint, dry and soft media inc. soft pastels and drawing in ink and graphite pencils.
