A few months ago, I took a class offered by Roz Stendahl on bookbinding (high recommended), and I created a few sketchbooks with Fabriano Artistico hot press watercolor paper. For some reason I had several sheets of this paper and I wanted to get to use it.
So in the past week I started to play with it. Hot press watercolor paper is a very different beast than cold press paper, and I’m still trying to understand how to use it without being too finicky and overworking my sketches. I like how it works with water-soluble inks (the first sketch is done with Diamine Eclipse ink), but I find working with watercolor still challenging.
Because the surface is very smooth, the watercolor spread very differently. There is more control in a way, but this is a problem for me because I’m already a control freak when it comes to leave watercolor doing its own thing.
I know that it’s all about practice and experience, so I’ll take some time to experiment and play.