Arches Cold Press Watercolor Pad 9x12

Overview

A 9x12 inch pad of 140-pound cold-press watercolor paper made from 100% cotton, one of the three surface textures Arches offers alongside hot press and rough.

Cotton rag paper behaves differently from wood-pulp paper under wet media: it holds more water without buckling and takes repeated lifting and glazing better, which is why Arches has stayed a reference point for watercolorists for a long time. Cold press sits in the middle of the three textures, with more tooth than hot press but a finer surface than rough, which is why it is the most commonly reached-for of the three for general painting.

• 100% cotton, natural white paper
• 140 lb weight, cold press texture
• 9 x 12 inch pad format
• One of three Arches textures: cold press, hot press, rough

Who it's for

Suits watercolor painters at any level who want a cotton paper that can take rewetting, lifting, and layered washes without warping. Less relevant to someone using dry media or acrylics, where the wet-media weight and texture are not doing the same work.

Pros and cons

Performance notes

The long cotton fibers are what let the sheet absorb and release water repeatedly without the surface breaking down, which matters for techniques like lifting color back out or building up several glazes. At 140 pounds it is a mid-weight sheet, thick enough to resist buckling under normal washes without the stiffness of a heavier block. The cold-press texture gives the paint some grain to grip without the pronounced tooth of rough paper.

Specifications