Review: Clairefontaine Paint ON mixed media paper (250gsm)

Clairefontaine Paint ON series is a somewhat affordable line of paper products with large variety of surfaces to choose from.

The paper are sold in pads, packs, sketchbooks and rolls. They are suitable for acrylic painting, gouache, ink, dry or oil pastels, collages and dry techniques. Note that there's no watercolour paper.

The paper pad I bought is for mixed media. There's no cotton content but at least the paper is acid-free. Paper weight is 250gsm, bright white and has a fine grain texture.

Price is around SGD 7.50 to 10.00 for 40 sheets. I bought this from Overjoyed and pricing is quite reasonable.

This paper works great with dry media.

Colour blending or layering with Caran d'Ache Neocolor I wax pastels.

Crayons work well.

This paper is not watercolour paper and hence there's no sizing applied. When used with watercolour, water gets absorbed quickly which makes blending colours or creating gradation with watercolour difficult. In short, this paper is not suitable for water media such as watercolour or gouache.

One thing I've learned over the years is to only buy watercolour paper to work with watercolour.

This is Caran d'Ache Neocolor watersoluble pastel. It works alright.

This paper is great at handling pen and ink. Lines are solid and don't feather.

This is good mixed media paper. Paper surface is on the smoother side. Pricing is reasonable so even if you don't like the paper, you won't lose much money. It's good practice paper for artists on a budget.

Try searching for this paper on Amazon and Jackson's Art (UK).