Shizen Pastel Paper

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

Good quality useful samples in various colors

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

I used this product to mace a bible case for my creative bible...It works great! After a while it will start to peel though... other than that, It is a pretty good deal!

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

Wonderful texture, beautiful deckle edges, recycled 100% cotton rag, very affordable! Great for charcoal sketching--just don't heavily work the surface. Suitably primed, it supports oil and acrylic. The colors I've used, gray, tan, white, black are lovely. For watercolor, Shizen has a sized, 300 gsm watercolor paper, also available from Dick Blick at very attractive prices.

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

Lovely cotton paper with a heavily deckled edge. I don't use this for pastels, but for crafts or letter writing. (I originally purchased this paper hoping to use it for Zentangle tiles, but the deckle edge is too heavy and uneven for that -- I would need to tear all four edges.)

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

I really like this paper, will work great to make mini journals and for dry mediums.

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

I actually buy this paper for book binding, the rich texture and deckle edge really gives great life to the books while remaining soft and pliable. Many of my customers end up using the books for scrap booking, so medium use on the paper is somewhat of a moot point.

Alternatively, I am not a big pastel user, but I had a scrap piece and used it for a goauche study. To my surprise it held up quite well! Although there was some 'pilling' on the surface if I overworked an area, there was little to no warping even in areas that were completely saturated. If you're looking for an alternative watercolor paper to get some neat texture, I recommend giving this a try.

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

Typically when I buy paper, I use it for multiple purposes. Here's the results of my attempts to use this Shizen paper:

First, for pastels, this paper does not work for hard or semi-hard pastels at all! They scrap off the top surface of the paper. Furthermore, if you try to blend harder pastels, it also tears up the paper. I then used some buttery soft pastels and that was okay, but again, I couldn't blend the way I like to, which is with my finger. In addition, the paper does not hold very many layers of pastels at all and you cannot spread the pastel around the paper at all.

Secondly, I love to use pastel paper with my soft, buttery colored pencils. This paper does not handle pencils at all. You cannot blend on the paper well, it tears it up. The pencils, yes, even the soft, buttery ones, literally scrap off the top coat of paper.

Then I went onto Inktense and Neocolor II just to see what would happen. This paper did not handle water well at all!! After getting the colors wet, the colors would not spread and blend like on every other kind of paper I've ever used them on and the paper literally buckled. So, nothing with water should be used on this paper.

Finally, I got out my pastel powders, the equivilant to pan pastels. They worked nicely enough, but again, using anything else on the paper, like your finger or a blender, messes up the paper, and it does not take but a couple of layers of pastel before the tooth of the paper is all filled up.

In my opinion, this paper is not worth the money. I like my paper to be multi-purpose, and I've always used colored pencils on pastel paper because I love the texture. The only thing I'd remotely think of using on this paper is maybe super soft pastels and pan pastels, but even those have limited use on this paper. Blending and multiple layers of pastels are nearly impossible. For paper that is so thick, it sure is very fragile and not very useful.

I am sad because I was looking forward to playing with yet another brand of paper. I heard that this company also makes watercolor paper. MAYBE I'll try that, but not sure I want to throw away any more money on this company. Sorry, but I did try.

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

The intense colors of the paper may put some people off, but try using it where the color of the paper is one of the colors of your composition.

This paper won't take a lot of stump blending nor will it like a lot of stiff or gritty pastels. this is best with dry soft pastels, and it's a lot of fun using panpastel or the softest stick a supplier makes. I find it useful. Others may not.

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

I used soft pastel on this paper, and framed it so the deckles were showing. it took the pastel nicely, the size is good for framing with mats, and the price is very good.

not so thrilled with the odd colors within the pack, would rather just get neutral, earthy colors

Comments about Shizen Pastel Paper:

I bay it just to tray it its not work at all for soft pastel