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Linear Ridges, bleeding, beading...
Please don't get this as a cheap, student grade "starter" watercolor paper or for watercolor experimentation.
This watercolor paper has distinct linear ridges running across it on one direction which makes it difficult to draw on before painting. Your paints can and probably will bleed down these groves.
Water and watercolors can bead up on the surface for 30 minutes or longer, so you know there's also something not quite right with the paper's absorbency. (This may not be so apparent with less watery application of waters or watercolors.)
Painting on this paper will not give one the feel for how watercolors and paper should act (understatement). It's not just poor quality, it's actually antagonistic to application of watercolors to the point that I don't see how they categorize it as watercolor paper. It's well below (!) the quality of 200 and 300 Strathmore student grade watercolor papers, for example.
This watercolor paper (cough, cough) would be okay to keep people busy only if they have very little ambition, promise or talent and don't intend to improve in any of those areas anytime soon, or ever. I could see this paper turning people off of watercolor painting for life. I'm serious.
So, as a student grade watercolor paper (cough, cough), it's the right weight of paper (140 lbs. or heavier) to start with but everything else is entirely wrong with it.
I think Hobby Lobby should give up on Master's Touch watercolor paper and bring back Big Art watercolor paper instead (that stuff was actuallly quite decent). Or something. Anything else! Unless it's worse than this stuff, which I don't think is possible.
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