I bought a sheet of Arches hot-press watercolor paper and wanted to see how it responded to my pens and watercolors. I cut a small section from the sheet (4×6) and got out a Pilot Prera.
Thinking I would let Google give me inspiration I searched for, and found, a bunch of small houses. One of them reminded me of the many houses Anita Davies has drawn (https://www.flickr.com/photos/anitadavies/) and I love her clean, simple, approach to her architectural sketches. I decided I’d try to do one in her style. Apologies to Anita as I didn’t come close to her standards and probably missed her style. But it was fun and I found working on the hot-press paper to be lots of fun.
Really nice sketch! I tried some Fabriano hot press for a while. . . I liked using a fountain pen on it, but I found watercolor really hard to manage. Maybe someday when I’m a better painter, I’ll give it another try.
My experience with smooth papers comes from Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbooks. Initially I didn’t like it much because the watercolors seemed to be uncontrollable. Quickly, though, I came to love them. As you say, smooth watercolor papers are great for fountain pens but they’re also ‘great’ for watercolors once you adjust the amount of water you’re using. I’m not an expert at watercolors and not even sure I want to be, but the smooth papers accommodate my ‘use them like crayons’ approach.
Cheers — Larry