Review: Legion Stonehenge Aqua Watercolor Paper

Spring, 2017
I've been watching some YouTube videos about watercolor, and by referral, found a watercolorist who had asked for and received free watercolor paper as samples, from the Legion paper company.
So I asked too, and they sent me a nice package with their Stonehenge watercolor blocks in both cold press, a medium textured surface, and their hot press block , a smooth surface. The pads are 9" x 12"

I promised to write a review, after trying it.

Here's what I did with the Hot Press:

And here's what I did with the Cold Press:

The last two were done by following instructional videos by Patrick Ley Greaves. This guy is a wonderful painter, and so generous with his time and knowledge. His web site is HERE, where he lists the video tutorials that you can watch. (Menu bar across the top.)

In general, I found working on these papers to be challenging. I am used to "magic papers," like Arches or (the best of the best) Twinrocker watercolor paper. The Arches you can get at just about any art supply company, and a few places carry Twinrocker, but mostly you can order that thru the company. It's the best paper I've ever worked on, magic paper.

Nice things I can say about the Legion Stonehenge Aqua paper is that
- the watercolor colors stay vivid
- it lifts pretty well
- it has a nice weight to it
- Their marketing department is awesome.

Mostly I had trouble with washes on this paper. If you look at the leaves on both iris pieces, you'll see mottling. Maybe there is too much sizing on the surface of the paper. I painted just like I always do, wet onto dry paper, controlling the flow and changing colors while I move down the leaf shape. Here that didn't work. I had more luck with wetting an entire shape to be painted, and THEN painting into the wet shapes. (Like the hot pink iris petals, painted this way. You can also see some lifting there.)

I still found the washes quite difficult to control.

For me, watercolor is hard enough, I need all the magic I can find, so paper makes a huge difference.
For a more experienced painter this might be lovely paper, but I'll stick with paper I know will almost paint for me, the Arhces and Twinrocker, (when I can get it.) I've passed along some of my sample paper to a calligrapher cousin, who may find that this is wonderful paper for calligraphy.