I have been painting in watercolor for many many years, and unlike you, I was confused too what paper to use for my painting in my early days of painting. With my experiences, I realized the actual difference between hot pressed and cold pressed watercolor paper.
Main difference between hot pressed and cold pressed paper lies in the paper texture. Cold pressed paper is rough textured on the other hand, hot pressed paper is very smooth. Hot pressed paper allows more detailed work of art but cold pressed paper allows the pigment to be granulated more hence excellent for loose type artwork.
And the more I tried to introduce myself with different type of art work, more I had a good understanding of them and I was able to decide myself what type of paper to use for my different kind of project.
What is hot pressed paper actually? And What is hot pressed paper used for?
Hot pressed paper is made usually in the Calendering process.
The calendering is the process of smoothing and compressing a material and the calendaring is used for ultrasmooth papers (hot pressed), the paper is pressed through hot steel cylinders conferring the desired smoothness.
It is kind of like ironing the paper. Exactly like ironing your clothes. With these metal cylinders it pressed the paper and make is ultrasmooth.
Hot pressed paper is best for illustrations with the pen work, or doing comic art. This is also very good for watercolor markers. As this paper type is very smooth, color looks more vibrant or saturated.
Hot pressed paper is very good to use for pen and wash or pen and ink drawing too. It is very comfortable to do cross hatching with the very tiniest nib too.
Below is one of my artworks as an example that I did on hot pressed paper, so that you can guess how actually it looks like when you draw on hot pressed paper.
Pic above: Is an illustration that is done with pen and ink on hot pressed paper. Notice the small detail tiny pen works and smoke effect done by rigger brush, also notice the saturation of the pigment. In cold press paper, smooth pen-work is very hard to do or tiny white smoke with rigger brush would be sort of very hard to do.
What is cold press paper? And What is cold press paper used for?
Cold pressed paper is defined at the marking felt stage of paper making. While paper web is still wet, at the end of the press section in paper making process, through the pressure of a marking felt the surface grain can be given to the papers. Such as cold pressed or rough grain for watercolor papers.
Cold press paper is best for impressionistic work, where the pigment can create texture with help of paper texture. The more I practiced watercolor painting, the more I was attracted to cold pressed paper. It opened the possibilities of unlimited windows of ideas when I put my brush on the paper.
Before I get to know watercolor, I did not have any ideas what a textured paper can do for a beautiful painting. Even if you are starting your watercolor journey, you can simply play with pigments with these texture paper and come up with some beautiful abstract artworks.
I have known many abstract an artist, they used this paper texture skilfully and created beautiful work of art. Starting from landscape to flower painting or portrait painting, everywhere cold press paper landed its feet.
Below is the example, I just did on plein air, simply on my sketchbook. It took me around 15 mins, and I was only able to do that as my sketchbook was cold pressed paper sketchbook.
In above image, painted at Kiama, a small town in southern NSW in Australia, paper texture gave this painting a new dimension. Also notice, how the trees and hills on the background beautifully merged without doing any specific brushwork.
What watercolor paper do professional artists use?
Professional painters use all kind of watercolor papers depending on their specialty. Usually illustrators or comic artists tends to use hot pressed watercolor paper, on the other hand abstract artists or landscape artists tends to choose cold pressed paper. All professionals use 100% cotton paper.
For a watercolor artist, it is important to understand the paper and having a good understanding of paper and pigment relationship with time. Usually, paper is selected depending on the type of artwork and preferences of the artists.
For example, If the artists style is to paint very tight painting then they tend to use hot pressed paper , as very work of details can be shown in there. Tight paintings are the paintings that are far from impressionistic art or the art work is labelled as more like tight, the more it looks like realistic.
Hyper realistic paintings are called tight painting. So, for those kind of paintings, hot pressed papers are very useful.
Scientific paintings or botanical drawing almost cannot be done in cold pressed paper. Hot pressed paper is more suitable for those art work. As botanical or scientific drawing requires more detailed work to be exposed, so paper texture should be avoided for those.
Abstract art is one of the interesting trends in modern art. To create texture or let the paper play with the pigments on its own kind of experiment is very much suitable for cold press paper artwork. These kinds of papers are first choice of impressionistic artists or landscape artists.
For portrait art, both cold pressed and hot-pressed papers are useful, depending on artists style. If artists want to paint very hyper realistic portrait, then hot pressed paper would be the first choice. On the other hand, if artists want to do impressionist portrait painting, cold press paper would be the paper to go.
For simpler understanding let’s have a look at the table below, this table is to help with the beginner watercolor artist. Professional and experienced artists can paint anything on any paper.
| Type of artwork | Paper, that goes best |
| Portrait, floral (realistic) | Hot pressed |
| Portrait, floral (impressionistic way) | Cold pressed |
| Landscape, seascape, cityscape | Cold pressed |
| Botanical, scientific | Hot pressed |
| Illustrations | Hot pressed |
| Comics | Hot pressed |
| Abstract | Cold pressed |
| Experimental art | Cold pressed |
Good quality watercolor paper is 100% cotton and acid free, hence are expensive. They have a good tolerance of soaking water and very much helpful for lifting pigments when necessary. Arches, Saunders or Baohong are one of those good quality paper.
To improve your painting, it is extremely necessary to use good quality paper. If you want to take watercolor seriously and don’t want to be in a frustrating situation with our painting, I would recommend not to use student grade watercolor paper at all.
When I started watercolor painting, I used lots of student grade papers.
Student grade papers are not 100% cotton, they are usually either 25% cotton or nothing is mentioned on the paper pad. With my experience I can tell , it only made my learning process slower and I wish someone would have told me on that time not to practice with student grade paper at all.
After changing my paper, when I switched back to professional grade paper, even with my day to day practicing I noticed a big improvement on my painting. It helped me to understand how pigment and water works with the paper.
So my advise would be, always use professional grade paper if you are serious about watercolor painting and moreover don’t want to be in frustration for long time.