Cut a smaller piece of each paper and paint something on them. Something in a familiar to you style of painting. ( don’t start experimenting I mean now that you want to figure out what paper to choose).

This way you’ll figure out what surface fits better to your painting style, what weight of paper works better with it, what colour of paper works better with the way you use your paints etc.

Yes, agreed – just paint on it whatever you normally paint. If you haven’t painted much and don’t yet know how you “normally” paint, then choose an exercise or tutorial and do the same one on each paper. Note which one looks best to you when they are dry, but also observe how each one feels while you are painting on it. Does one seem like the paint flows better, or maybe you just like one over the others and can’t really explain why? If so, no need to worry about why, just enjoy learning with it.

Definitely break the sheets down into smaller pieces, so you can save the rest of each sheet for your masterpiece

CK =)
I take great comfort in knowing that my genuine typos will probably be blamed on some device's autocorrect.
DIY art supplies, sketches, and more: cyntada.com / @cyntada

Hi George… there’s only one way to learn how your various papers will handle and that’s to paint on them! What works well for one Artist isn’t always successful for another.

I have worked on the cold pressed 140# papers you listed. I’ve also worked on the rough surface of Arches and the 200# weight of the Saunders. I currently have some sheets of Fabriano bright white, but haven’t tried them yet.

From my own experience, I have found the warm white of the Saunders to be a distraction and it doesn’t have as much “tooth” as I’d like for creating textures. The Arches is a good sturdy paper that will manage a lot of glazing or very wet washes with the paper beginning to abrade. The Fabriano has become my favourite of the three because of it’s hard surface. It lifts easily, meaning that glazing becomes a little more challenging.

Each of my papers has a front and back side. The front, where you can read the watermark as Brian has mentioned, has a little more tooth than the back.

I tear all my paper, I don’t cut it. I prefer the appearance of a simulated deckle even though it’ll be hidden in a frame or wrapped around a stretcher. It’s not part of this discussion, I know.

Anyway, I tear all my paper into standard sizes if I’m not painting full sheets. So two half sheets, or four quarter sheets, or eight 1/8th sheets, or 16 little 5.25×7.25″ exercise sheets. I love this little size and do all my charting and technique practice on them. It’s very easy to make journals of them. Or file them into boxes by subject…

The small sizes, however, won’t necessarily give you a good *feel* for which paper will work for you. I think you’re going to have to paint on the eighth or quarter sheets to understand how your washes and glazes will lay on the paper.

The thing is… you won’t get a good feel for your paper with just one painting, or even two or three… sometimes it takes awhile. Lots of practice. Good luck in your journey.

For you as a novice there is [B]NO [/B]difference between the top three papers
[LIST=1]
[*]Arches
[*]Fabriano Artistico
[*]Saunders Waterford
[/LIST]

Other than Price. Contrary to my expectations,
Arches is the least expensive at $39.99 USD
Fabriano Artistico is second at $47.99
and Saunders Waterford the most expensive at $52.15

All prices CheapJoe’s, Nov 19, 2015, 140# CP package of 10 sheets

that math for the pads should be

Arches 15.29/12 = 1.27 per sheet

You can get pads of paper from blick for the same price online. Yes I agree pads at this price are a good option. Often the cost per sheet/square inch goes up dramatically for the convenience of gluing or spiral binding, even worse for blocks. It really distorts our costs in a confusing way that requires us artist to do a lot of math like Virgil is doing to notice the differences in actual value we are getting.

I don’t know what is the price of Arches in US but Arches though it is made by the French Canson, is very expensive in Europe too.
In my opinion its price is not justified at all for the characteristics and quality that this paper has.
Not to mention that it smells badly when wet ( a very serious reason for not preferring it as the odour that has triggers my allergy).

Arches uses animal glue, sizing is gelatin (Jello) which is for the most part hooves of animals, which stinks. The reason it is a bit stronger to abuse, is this sort of traditional sizing, and the length of the cotton fibers. Cotton rag is longer than cotton linters but we don’t know how much of each is used in each paper, we just know it’s very durable paper. This is the traditional way of making paper, but even it’s color is going to vary depending on the water in the river from season to season. It is distributed by Canson in the USA which might be why it’s affordable here.

Arches is the name brand really, it is like any other brand where people rely upon the brand name more than testing to choose what they are using, but it’s got a lot of good traits which make it very popular. Especially for artists who choose to get very cheap and stiff brushes, this can handle a lot more scrubbing while lifting without getting that frayed surface.

Fabriano uses another type of sizing which does not use animals, its vegan, it does not stink like that, and it also behaves differently, the paper isn’t as durable to abuse, I have to be far more gentle much like when I use student grade papers, and it’s easier to lift things until they dry, even Pthalos come up. I still enjoy using it, you just have to use it a different way, and for example use softer brushes.

I know a lot of people who prefer Fabriano solely because of smell, I myself cannot smell the difference, but then I have used oils which are even stronger and that is why so many choose to use watercolors.

I am not sure where Saunders fits into all this (still have yet to get some since it’s very expensive every time I see it, probably the opposite of the issue with arches in europe ). I’ve not heard that it stinks so they must do their sizing some different way than the arches. The only thing I know is they tend to buffer their papers with calcium carbonate, which makes sense since they are an english mill and the english white cliffs of dover are made of calcium. They also have two lines of paper which are artist grade ( millford, waterford). If it’s 100% cotton this buffering should actually make it less prone to pollution and whiter. Other papers buffer too, generally ones made from wood pulp which is actually a bad thing.

In reality they are not that much different, all three are very good 100% cotton papers, and it’s very hard to know exactly what each is doing in detail so it can be compared, they only tell us the good features not the drawbacks, we can only compare the end result. Understanding the ingredients, just like knowing the pigments is critical though in understanding and comparing how each works.

And of course pricing varies quite a bit as well, which probably has a lot to do with which brand each artist prefers, do the math like Virgil is showing – ( width times height times number of sheets / divided by the price ). Depending on where you live is going to vary the value a lot, I would probably get Montval for example if it was cheaper, but arches is just a tiny bit more expensive so I cannot really justify it.