I did an exercise of a watercolor pear on four different papers. The pear and the palette were the same in all four, but the papers were very different. I learned that papers make a big difference! In order below:

1. the standard 140# cold press paper (which I was the most familiar and comfortable with)
2. 300# cold press paper (which sucks up a lot of paint!)
3. #140 hot press paper (which might be good for something with sharp defined lines but is not at all good for blending as seen here)
4. rice paper (on which I best caught what I was after although the pear should have been yellower).

To my surprise, I enjoyed the rice paper the most.

I’ll be exploring that more!