Recently I stopped in at a local Walmart to buy an art paper pad for acrylics. I had used up my last paper and needed to stock up with my usual 9"x12" pad. I like to use these special papers for painting as they are inexpensive, light weight and are easy to store without taking a lot of space like stretched canvas would. Paintings look great on this paper and the colors get enhanced so much after putting on a sealer that sometimes it's hard to tell if the paint is oil or acrylic.
I paint for the sake of painting and unless I'm commissioned to do a painting, I"ll paint on paper. I live in an area where people will not pay much (over $50) for a painting, so I can offer them paper instead as long as it's good quality and has some decent weight. Weight of paper simply is determined how much pressure is used in creating it, i.e. 60# paper = 60# of pressure to make it. The higher the pressure the better the paper.
When I got to the area where the paper pads were, my usual paper pads were out of stock. All they had was Daler/Rowney 9"x12" Acrylic paper pad.
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I like to cut these papers into 8"x10" for inexpensive frame options as one can find them just about anywhere for fairly cheap. This paper is 115lb and come 10 sheets to a pad. My price was $2.97 + tax. It was cheap enough to give them a try to see how well this paper performs compared to my usual ones. I was in a pinch and didn't have time running around looking for my usual papers, so I bought one pad.
The next day I decided to try a sheet out and compared it to what I was used to. The paper was much thinner and smoother. Once I started prepping my paper with a thin layer of gesso, the edges began curling and the middle buckled out. I had also used some masking tape for a straight line, for an ocean horizon, which I do often with my other papers. When I pulled the tape off, it pulled a layer of paper along with it. I also tape the corners down to keep the paper flat and so that it won't move and was worried that the tape would pull off a layer from my corners.
During the course of painting on this paper, I notice that things just began getting worse with warping. It would even undo the taped corners from my table as I painted. Each time I painted a layer I would have to stop and let the paper dry totally, before continuing otherwise I'd have a rolled up piece of paper. To solve the problem of warping on my next painting, I added a few layers of gesso on both sides of the paper. That seemed to have eliminated some of the problem. With thicker paper I've never had a problem of warping nor the need for gesso. The papers come ready for painting.
Once I finally got my painting done, it looked good but the paper was rolled up after drying. No....I do not like this paper by Daler/Rowney nor do I recommend it! There are much better papers out there available. Here is a link regarding painting on paper and the outcome:
http://www.justpaint.org/paper-warping-when-painting-with-acrylics/
