I often get asked why I choose cold pressed paper over hot pressed paper and
vice versa. Today I'm going to answer that question while I demonstrate how I
painted parts of this pansy on both hot pressed and cold pressed paper. I have a
stash of watercolor paper here at home in this big paper cabinet. In this
cabinet you will find both hot and cold pressed paper. I have full sheets of both
and I have pads and blocks of both. I even have a roll of watercolor paper
that I can cut. When I paint sometimes I'll use hot pressed paper and sometimes
I'll use cold pressed paper. Many of my students who are new to painting in
watercolor will often ask me why I chose hot pressed paper over cold pressed
paper for a particular painting and my answer is usually the same - I don't have
a particular reason for choosing one over the other. I enjoy using both. I mix
it up for my own enjoyment. If I've been painting on hot pressed paper for a few
paintings in a row I'll switch to cold pressed for the next one. There are
however two exceptions that will make me choose hot pressed over cold pressed
which I'll talk about at the end of this video. There is another textured
watercolor paper that you can buy called rough paper. I don't use it so I'm not
going to talk about it in this video. I'll focus on hot and cold press only
I'll also only be comparing Arches paper. Obviously different papers are going to
have different tooth and different qualities so I'll stick to the paper
that I'm most familiar with. So what is the difference between hot pressed and
corn pressed paper? Basically the difference is the tooth or the texture
of the paper. Cold pressed is more textured than hot pressed and hot
pressed paper is smooth. Some people say that hot pressed paper
doesn't absorb water as quickly as cold pressed paper which means you should
have more time to work with the paint. Now I've never paid attention to that
myself so I thought I'd do a quick test on some scrap paper. On the left I have
some Arches cold pressed paper and on the right I have some Arches
hot pressed paper. I'm wetting them both at the same time with some water. I've
put the camera on time-lapse so that I can see whether one paper absorbs the
water quicker than the other. I left them for about 10 minutes or so
and I came back and this is what I found. This is the hot pressed paper. It's still
wet. It has a sheen on the surface. This is the cold pressed paper. It's also
still wet but the sheen isn't as shiny as the hot pressed paper. So you can see
over here there's more of a sheen there on the surface so it's slightly wetter
than the cold pressed paper even though the cold pressed paper is wet it's not
as wet. So if I drop some paint onto the paper while it's like this let's see what
it looks like. So there was movement on the hot pressed but not quite as much
movement on the cold pressed. so this is the hot pressed - so it moves straight
away but here on the cold pressed it tends to sit longer than what it does on
the hot pressed so yes from that I would agree that cold pressed paper seems to
absorb the water quicker than the hot pressed paper. I'll drop some paint onto
the dry paper to see if there's any difference so that's the cold pressed
and now on to the hot pressed.
Now that looks fairly similar on both papers but it looks like the cold pressed
might absorb it a little bit quicker than the hot pressed. That paint on the
cold pressed paper around the edge seems to be soaking in quicker than the paint
on the right there. So there's not much in it but I agree cold pressed paper
absorbs water slightly quicker than hot pressed. I have read that if you like to
make use of blooms in your paintings which I do then hot pressed paper works
better for that so I had to try that out as well. So let's have a look at the cold pressed first I'll put some paint on there on
the dry paper and I'll put the same color on to the hot pressed. Ok so
that's the same color on both papers. I'll drop some water onto them to create
a watercolor bloom on each. So this is the cold pressed and the hot pressed. I
let them sit for a minute or two and then I dropped another water droplet on
there. They've sat for a little while - I'm dropping some more water on
there now just to see what happens. I'll speed it up so you can see - and it seems
that the watercolor bloom on the right hand side on the hot pressed paper seems
to be creating more of a dramatic watercolor bloom there. After doing those
little tests on the scrap paper I thought the best way to further compare
the two surfaces would be to paint the same subject on each pape. So I painted
this pansy on hot pressed paper and also on cold pressed paper so let's have a
look at that. I'll start with the pansy on the cold pressed paper. I'm going to
work on wet paper because I find the paint goes on easier when I wet it first
and I don't necessarily want a flat wash on the petal. This is Winsor violet that
I'm using and I'm using a Da Vinci maestro brush here. This is a series 35
maestro brush. So I paint that on to the wet paper the paint goes on really
easily with that water that's on the paper and it gives me that uneven wash
that I want. This is the hot pressed paper and I'm going to do exactly the
same thing. I've just wet it and now I'm painting on some Winsor violet. Straight
away I can feel the difference between putting the paint on the hot pressed
paper and on the cold pressed paper. It seems to slip all over the surface here
whereas on the cold pressed paper it absorbed into the paper quicke. So it's
a little more difficult to lay the paint down evenly on this surface. It tends to
float on top. This is the cold pressed and this is the hot pressed and this is
how they look side by side. They look similar. Like I said I didn't want an
even flat wash. I wanted to see the paper showing through in places. Even though it
was a little harder to paint the petal on the hot pressed paper it has dried
just as well as the cold pressed paper. So then I continued on. This is the cold
pressed paper that I'm working on. I've done the same thing. I've wet it first
and now I'm going to drop in some French ultramarine to add interest and those
colors blend well together.
Here I'm using my brush as a sponge to lift color off the paper and that
creates a highlight there. So my brush is damp but the paper is damp and it
sucks a bit of that paint back off the paper and then that reveals the
whiteness of the paper creating a highlight and then I do the same thing
on the hot pressed paper. I'm dropping in the French ultramarine onto the damp paper
and again I find the paint is slipping over the surface rather than being
absorbed the way it was on the cold pressed paper
It seems to sit on top and that gives me a little longer to work the
paint. Now I'll lift some paint off just like I did on the cold pressed paper and
that seems to feel the same on both papers. It lifts fairly easily.
Back to the cold pressed paper now and the Winsor lemon is beautiful and
bright. It goes on quite easily. I'm painting on the dry paper here and here
it is on the hot pressed paper and it's much the same. Now I'm starting to paint
the darker markings. I'm layering one color over the top of another. I'm
working on damp paper here. This is cold press that I'm working on. I've got a
lot more pigment mixed into my paint. I do the same thing on the hot pressed
paper. I've dampened this section where I'm
working and again the paint isn't absorbing as
quickly as it does on the cold pressed.
Here I'm dropping in some quinacridone magenta to the cold press. Now I'm
painting some color on the edge. I've dampened the edge of the petal and I'm
using quinacridone magenta. I'm doing the same thing here on the hot pressed
down the bottom here. This is the cold pressed paper and. Winsor violet again.
I do the same thing here on the hot pressed. Although this is not difficult
to do I think it is slightly easier to do on the cold pressed paper.
It seems to be a bit more forgiving on the cold pressed. I'm using my liner
brush now to paint on the fine lines. This is the cold pressed paper that I'm
working on. I'm using the Winsor Violet.
Now I'm doing the same thing on the hot press and the cold press felt very
similar to this. I couldn't really tell that there was any difference between
the hot and the cold press putting this fine work on and I found the same thing
here. I'm still working on the cold pressed. I'm painting in this center and
it's just as easy to paint it on that cold pressed as it is the hot pressed.
Here I am painting some ink on the cold pressed just adding some more detail
along the edge. Here I'm on the hot Pressed. I'm doing the same thing. That
feels much the same. There they are side by side. The cold pressed is on the
left and the hot pressed paper is on the right.I don't see a great deal of
difference in them but I do feel that it was slightly easier to paint the flower
on the cold pressed paper mainly because the paint was absorbed
into the paper more readily whereas on the hot pressed paper it tended to slip
and slide on the surface for longer. Once you get used to that you can use it to
your advantage because it gives you longer working time with the paint.
Overall I don't see much difference between the two paintings. I think the
color might be slightly brighter on the hot pressed
but that's debatable. I have to say though that this time when I was
focusing my attention on the differences I enjoyed painting on the cold pressed
paper more than the hot pressed paper. I definitely found it easier to apply the
washes on the cold pressed paper and I've never noticed that before.
When would I choose hot pressed paper over cold pressed paper? I have two
reasons. The first is that I sell a lot of prints of my work and what I found is
that the paintings that are painted on the hot pressed paper tend to reproduce
slightly better than those painted on the cold pressed paper. Now it's only a
very slight difference and it's nothing to be concerned about. I'll show you what
I mean here with this painting. It's painted on cold pressed paper. This is a
print that I made of the giraffe painting. Because it was painted on the
cold pressed paper if you look closely you can see the texture of the paper on
the printed part of the print. Technically there's nothing wrong with
that but I'll show you the difference when I print from a painting that I
painted on hot pressed paper. This cockatoo painting is painted on hot
pressed paper and here's the print that I made of it. Now if you look closely at
that there's no texture that you could see in the painted surface because there
was no texture on the paper. So a painting on hot pressed paper might
reproduce better if you're working in licensing or if you're illustrating a
book or something like that. So as far as printing goes the difference between the
two papers is only slight and you probably wouldn't even notice unless I
pointed it out to you. The other reason I might choose hot pressed over cold
pressed is if I'm painting a very detailed subject and I want to show lots
of detail or if the subject to paint is quite difficult. Sometimes I can
save a failed painting with the use of a watercolor pencil or plain colored
pencils and I find it easier to use pencil on a hot pressed paper because
it's smoother. So choosing the hot pressed paper gives me some peace of
mind if I'm going to paint a difficult subject. When I first started painting in
watercolor I used cold pressed paper. when I got a bit more experienced and I
began to sell my paintings I ordered some hot pressed paper to try out. So I
had developed some skill with watercolor before I tried painting on hot pressed
paper. So my advice if you're just starting out
stick with the cold pressed paper until you start to feel more confident then
when you're ready try some hot pressed paper to see if you like it. I hope you
found this video interesting. Thank you for watching. As always give this video a
like and hit the subscribe button and I will see you soon with a new video.
Take care I haven't yet asked one I choose cold-pressed 1 take 2 take 3
total 20 when I first started painting in watercolor I used cold pressed paper
when I became more proficient proficient
when I became more proficient when I became better when I got better when I
first started painting in watercolor I used cold pressed paper when I became
more proficient so if again instead of saying better
proficient sounds a bit posh when I first started painting in watercolor I
used cold pressed paper when I became I became better should be when I got
bitter when I became when I became bitter when I got better I'll say when I
got better I'll focus on hot and cold pressed only and also there are however
two exception who taught me