Review: MAyArt watercolour paper (300gsm)

MAyArt Creativity watercolour paper is made by Malaysian company Maypap.

I've not heard of this brand and company before. Anyway, I bought this because of the extremely affordable price. I bought this for SGD 4.12 (USD ~$3.09) at Overjoyed, art store here in Singapore.

The pad I bought has 12 sheets of A4-sized hotpress watercolour paper. The paper is bright white, 300gsm, acid-free and 100% cellulose. The paper is said to be from Netherlands.

The paper is also available in coldpress and 100% cotton.

I bought the hotpress version for the smooth surface which works better with mixed media.

Just for comparison purposes, the student grade Daler Rowney Aquafine watercolour paper (A4 sized) that I usually use is SGD 8.83. The Fabriano Studio watercolour paper (12 x 9) with 25% cotton is slightly more the two times the price of the MAyART.

This was drawn with mixed media, namely Koh-I-Noor Polycolor coloured pencils, Caran d'Ache Neocolor I and watercolour.

The paper is bright white and able to retain the vibrancy of the media applied on the surface.

Here's another mixed media sketch with pen, ink, watercolour, coloured pencils and crayons.

The smooth surface works great with coloured pencils and crayons which are able to cover the paper almost completely very easily.

Limitation or downside to the paper is since it's 100% cellulose, it's difficult to use wet on wet techniques on it. Paint will just sink into the paper and not much even on a wet surface. Shown above are red horizontal lines painted over a wet surface and you can see the horizontal strokes obviously. With good quality 100% cotton watercolour paper, colour blends will be very smooth, and with the same test the horizontal strokes will blend and be barely noticeable.

This paper is good for quick sketches, paint and go, for creating stylised artworks. It's not good for loose watercolour with soft edges, colour blends and gradation. Creating colour blends will involve pushing the paint around rather than letting the paint and water do the job for you.

Layering or glazing is possible.

This ink sketch was painted with fountain pen ink filled in a waterbrush. The gray is Noodler's Lexington Gray.

You can certainly use markers on this paper. Water-based markers work better. Alcohol markers will work but the paper will absorb lots of ink which will use up the markers real quick.

Conclusion

I already know 100% cellulose watercolour paper are not great for creating colour blends so it's not a surprise that this paper performed badly with wet on wet techniques.

My sketching style to be quite stylised since I don't paint with much colour blends or fading edges, so this paper is quite suitable for the type of sketches I create. The paper is also quite good for mixed media art.

The performance here is actually quite similar to the Fabriano Studio watercolour paper with 25% cotton content. But that's almost two times more expensive. So this paper at SGD $4.12 is really worth the money. This is definitely paper I don't mind buying again. And I like that the surface is bright white which really makes the colours look more vibrant.

I'm not sure if this paper can be found overseas in other countries though.