The 10 Best Watercolor sketch Pads (2023 reviews)

We consider a watercolor sketch pad to be a worthy investment in the long run. We are here to help you choose the right one for your needs from all the best available products in market today.

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Our Top Picks:

Best Overall: Buy: Strathmore Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For portrait: Buy: Canson Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For beginners: Buy: Artisto Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For beginning And intermediate Watercolor Artists: Buy: Misulove Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best With Water colour Paint: Buy: Artnfly Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For Professional: Buy: Arteza Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For Media: Buy: Amazon basics Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best With Mason Jars: Buy: chalky Crown Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For multiple washes: Buy: Bb bachmore Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best For Acrylic Painting: Buy: Taobary Watercolor sketch Pad READ REVIEW

Best Overall: Strathmore Watercolor sketch Pad

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The strathmore watercolor sketch pad is long-lasting, rigid and fits well with your regular usage like a dream. This is a great watercolor journal with sturdy pages that are wonderful for any kind of watercolor paint or ink. It's built sturdy and the paper is high quality and nice and thick and toothy. It is perfect for any wet media as well as pencils and pastels.

There are 22 sheets in this pad and they are half the size of a regular letter paper sheet, so it's a convenient size to make smaller sized sketches or paint flowers or smaller objects. The paper is slightly textured and holds paint well. It is used for zentangling or zendoodling with markers or for water colors.

This with some watercolor pencils and a couple of brushes makes a fantastic travel diary for both writing and sketches. It is a great watercolor journal with sturdy pages that are wonderful for any kind of watercolor paint or ink.

• Good brand reputation
• New and hot release

Best For portrait: Canson Watercolor sketch Pad

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Canson line of pad come in a pretty wide variety of styles, so you can definitely find one that suits your individual preferences and needs. This paper is good for small pieces like tags. It is perfect for kids and adults to get started with watercolor, the paper holds up to quite a bit of water, doesn't work too fast, and handles color pretty well. It's very heavy-duty but it does bow a little if you use wet on wet. The paper really holds up to the water and dries quickly.

The paper does not permit alot of scrubbing, no need to scrub very much, and paint will lift so well. It doesn't warp very much either which is very good. It is ideal for watercolor and suitable for use with pencil, colored pencil, pen, ink, charcoal, pastel, and acrylic. It is great for testing, not so much for finished work.

• Good quality, fit to draw with both normal pencil and water color
• Definitely works well for heavy use of water
• Curls slightly when damp but good paper over all

Best For beginners: Artisto Watercolor sketch Pad

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Artisto offers a variety of pad for personal choice and yet maintaining quality in all the variants. This is awesome paper, certainly for beginners and maybe more advanced, too. Each sheet in the pad is bound by glue, creating a smooth edge, that when removed doesn’t cause damage to your painting. The thickness helps prevent the watercolor from bleeding through to the next page, and allows the resulting artwork to be nice and strong.

The quality of the paper is easy to work with when using multiple mediums. This paper is very sturdy and has quite a bit of texture. It is suitable for better paint performance and durability.

• Perfect size for sketching, painting, and beyond
• Good for blending, watery paint, and slight brush scrubbing
• Great value for beginners watercolor painting

Best For beginning And intermediate Watercolor Artists: Misulove Watercolor sketch Pad

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Next on the list, we've got yet another pad that manages to win our hearts. It's the misulove watercolor sketch pad and it's widely considered as pad that has the most suitable features. These are really wonderful and high quality watercolor pads. You can use this paper for your watercolors, oil, and acrylic paints. It is strong enough for all types of artistic projects, such as drawing, pastels, inks, painting or sketch book with markers, pencils or brushes. The cover of the pad folds all the way back leaving the rest of the glue-bound sheets easy to mask and use.

This heavyweight, absorbent paper is suitable for watercolor techniques as well as most dry media, making this pad as versatile as your creativity. It is great for all levels of creativity. The sheet pad is medium weight with a linen-like textured surface on the front and a smoother surface on the back.

• Compactly sized, great for mixed media pieces
• Good brand reputation

Best With Water colour Paint: Artnfly Watercolor sketch Pad

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention artnfly watercolor sketch pad for daily purpose. Whether you’re searching for drawing paper for kids or sketch pads for drawing for adults, this watercolor journal makes the perfect gift. It is nice and thick, and holds the paint well. It is ideal for all wet on dry and wet on wet water color techniques, and combination with other media like ink.

The Cold Press Watercolor Sketchbook Pads have a good texture and are economical to use. It is good for practice, currently using for small greeting cards or painting. The texture is so pronounced that it's difficult to get a nice painting unless you are deliberately using that texture in the painting. It is a thick enough paper (140lbs) that the water doesn't warp it too much (when the edges are taped down) unless you really saturate the paper with water, but it warps if you don't tape down the edges. The back is much smoother.

• Good watercolor or watercolor pencils and sketching paper
• Excellent watercolor pads for beginners, or just for fun
• Very smooth on one side and textured on the other
• Fun to get a flow going with paint

Best For Professional: Arteza Watercolor sketch Pad

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The arteza watercolor sketch pad is suitable and reliable and fits well with your daily usage. These watercolour pads are the perfect spiral-bound solution for artists of all skill level. Your Arteza watercolor paper is thicker & heavier (140 lb./300gsm), so it can stand up to multiple washes without warping or bleeding through. It’s textured paper that absorbs a good bit, so it might dry out markers prematurely.

Your Arteza painting paper has a cold-pressed surface. It is ideal for large, even washes & for finer detail, too. These are nice, inexpensive pads for quick sketching and washes or practice. The texture on the paper is very nice.

• Keeps art saved, more practicing happening
• Great at absorbing the paint and not letting it bleed
• Strong and can handle a few layers of paint

Best For Media: Amazon basics Watercolor sketch Pad

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Next on the list, we've got yet another pad that manages to win our hearts. It's the amazon basics watercolor sketch pad and it's widely considered as pad that has the most suitable features. This paper is good quality for amateur painters. It works well with water color pencils, also used with alcohol inks, also used with stencils and pastes. It’s also like hot press so very smooth. It’s also super thick and perfect for saving or framing.

This is a good pad of watercolor paper and it works as expected. It is ideal for media such as watercolor, acrylic, ink, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and more. It’s pulls back to allow you to carefully pull out each page, minimizing the chance of tearing it up before you even get to use it. It is a lot of fun to use.

• Press textural surface that tolerates repeated washes and reworking
• 140 lb thickness has a nice weight to handle the absorption of ink
• Smooth surface but has a slight toothy texture
• Great quality for both water color and acrylic

Best With Mason Jars: chalky Crown Watercolor sketch Pad

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If you want nothing but the best desirable pad, then chalky crown watercolor sketch pad is the one you should definitely consider, as it manages to bring a lot to the table. These watercolor pads are perfect to experiment with different techniques, strokes and ideas and let your inner artist shine. They are nice and small, which makes them easy to transport or take with you with minimal effort. These pages have fairly large perforation holes that work fine to tear them if you bend it a few times. The perforated sheets allow them to be removed easily with a clean looking edge.

These folders can tear papers because they are quite deep and can have fairly sharp edges. They are great with mason jars, toy bins, pantry storage, craft projects, containers and tons of other things. It has a good texture to it but isn’t too harsh. These are nice and small, which makes them easy to transport or take with you with minimal effort.

• Heavy duty paper holds up to water use
• Great for walnut ink and oil sketches
• High quality paper for color painting

Best For multiple washes: Bb bachmore Watercolor sketch Pad

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The bb bachmore watercolor sketch pad should be able to handle its purpose and duties with ease. Heavyweight and versatile, you can expect your colors to be as rich and pigmented as ever with this absorbent pad. These papers are made of acid-free paper with thick, strong, slick-smooth white & durable features. It is great for 1 pack of watecolor pad with size 9’’ x 12’’, 32 inside papers. It is suitable for both watercolor techniques and mixed media.

The weight for each paper is 140lb/300gram, which is much thicker and better than the similar sketchbook offered by other brands. It is designed with double-sided molded texture, and it provides ample possibilities for your creativity to flow. It is suitable for multiple washes, experience less back runs and won't deteriorate easily. These papers can be used for any wet techniques and other mixed media arts.

• Perfect kit for beginners or artists
• Perfect use for adults & kids
• One of the new comers and featured product

Best For Acrylic Painting: Taobary Watercolor sketch Pad

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The taobary watercolor sketch pad's material feels more premium than its price would suggest. The cold press nice texture of the watercolor papers are suitable for mixed media, such as wet and dry. The water color papers for artists are suitable for beginners, amateurs, educational arts and crafts, school supplies, art exams, watercolorist and more, exquisite and practical for you to use.

It is made of quality cotton material, and the white water color papers for kids have the characteristics of nice water absorption, resistance to pilling and friction, reliability and long application time, so you can use them for a long time. The watercolor papers can be sent to someone who like acrylic painting, watercolor painting and sketch. The watercolor papers can match with pencils, inks, crayons, pastels and so on.

• New and hot release
• Good investment for long term