Review: Canson Graduate Watercolour Paper

Behaves like student grade paper, unsurprisingly

The Canson Graduate Watercolor Paper is 250gsm coldpress watercolour paper made with 100% cellulose, and made in France.

I do not know why but the way the paper is cut makes the paper feel like cheap cartridge paper.

The paper is only available with coldpress texture and the paper surface pattern is very machine-like, in other words, distracting. There's only texture on one side, and the other side is smooth.

Here's a drawing by my daughter using coloured pencils, and the machine-like paper texture can clearly be seen.

Drawing with ink works well and I can get lines with solid edges.

This is an attempt at wet on wet. This paper does not absorb much water so you'll have to use a lot of water in other to use wet of wet techniques.

Colours do appear quite vibrant on the paper.

Paper does buckle noticeably with water.

These are three tests I always use to test watercolour paper.

The first test is a wet on wet blending test where I try to blend two colours on a wet surface. I had to use a lot of water to get the paint to move, and then tilt the paper to move the paint around. The paper dries faster since most of the water is on the surface rather than absorb into the paper. When the paper dries, I have to spray the surface to make it wet.

For the second test I tried to paint a gradation. I actually used a good amount of water for the first stroke at the top, but the water at the top dried faster to create that dry edge on the right which I did not want.

For the last test, I had painted three horizontal strokes on a wet surface. The horizontal strokes are still kinda visible. On good quality watercolour paper, the horizontal lines would have blended and won't be noticeable.

These three tests show that the paint has limited movement on paper, and watercolour does not dry consistently as certain areas dry faster.

Canson Graduate watercolour paper is student grade paper that behaves just like student grade paper. It's suitable for quick pen, ink and watercolour sketches, or quick paintings where you just paint and leave it as it is. Since colours are quite vibrant on the paper, you can use it to test colour mixes too.

This paper performs quite similarly to the Derwent Aquafine (above) and the Fabriano Studio (review) which are both also student grade watercolour paper.