HIMIGouache Pad 7X10''(98lb/160g) 50 Sheets Mix Paper Pad, Side Wire Bound, Fine Texture, in Gouache Acrylic Art Pad for Sketching, Ink Sketch Book, Art Supplies Drawing Pad Gift （Square）

the paper is touch and can take a lot of damage repairs!

My daughter loves this paper.

even though the product says it curl resistant, the pages clearly curls up. Not a big problem though, just a bit dissapointed.

I ordered this pad of mixed media paper for my teenaged granddaughter who has been working with different styles of paint and sketch materials ever since taking an art class. I recently purchased a set of gouache paint and saw this compact little spiral book and thought she would really like it. The paper is a medium weight and a good thickness and has a lightly textured finish that works well with her new paint. I had never heard of paper that has edges glued at the top and bottom, and it is not something I would have thought to look for. But now that I have seen how well it works, I am a fan. It helps to keep the paper flat and once the top page has been completed and allowed to dry, it is fairly easy to separate from the pages underneath. She uses this paper for pencil and charcoal sketches, too but it is not suitable for most markers (ink spreads and it can bleed through). The pages are small (only 7" X 10") and the spiral bound book has a hard cover so my granddaughter can easily pop it in her backpack The current price of $10.99 seems very reasonable for a pad with 50 sheets.

I ordered this because I'm always testing paper to find the perfect one for the various media I create with. I've got some of the HIMI gouache and am quite happy with it, so I figured their gouache pad might be pretty decent too.For gouache, it works great, as well as with acrylic. A little bit goes a long way with either of them. It also does pretty well with watercolor, though you'll want to limit the amount of wet on wet as the paper can buckle a bit; on the other hand, since the two edges next to the spiral binding are sealed into a pad, the paper stays flat, like painting on a watercolor block. Fineliner, charcoal, and graphite work well on it, as expected, and it's got just enough tooth to work well with colored pencil and oil pastels, though chalk pastels will be even more of a nightmare mess than usual. Alcohol markers, however, do bleed through; this is unsurprising as it's only a 98 lb/160gsm paper and they'll bleed through 300gsm if you're not careful. A fast rip with some stickier washi tape did pull up a few fibers, but I had to look to find them.Overall, this is a fantastic multimedia journal that does well with everything but chalk pastels and alcohol markers, and is hitting my regular purchase list as my new art-journal fave! It's comparable in price and weight to Fabriano or Strathmore mixed-media sketchbooks, but neither one of them has the blocked sides to help keep the paper flat on the first side I work on.

HIMI Gouache Pad 7X10''(98lb/160g) 50 Sheets Mix Paper Pad, Side Wire Bound, Fine Texture, In Gouache Acrylic Art Pad for Sketching, Ink Sketch book, Art Supplies Drawing Pad Gift （Bird）My daughter absolutely adores this gouache pad. She has a large supply of HIMI gouache and this pad is a natural fit for her style of art. I suspect the biggest draw for her was the stylish cover. The pages are glued together so it's designed to be used sequentially. Paint then peel off page, ready for the next.

The media could not be loaded.  I saw other reviewers saying that they were upset because their pages were glued and thus ripped. But that’s only if you aren’t careful and try and just force the pages apart. I don’t know WHY the pages are together like that but so far it hasn’t been an issue for me. I’m so far mostly satisfied with my purchase.

DESCRIPTION is not accurate "Glue bound to resist paper curl：The upper and lower sides are lightly coated with sealing glue, so that the paper does not curl or warp during the creation of semi-dry/wet media. Paper is not easy to moisture when stored them. :Using a lighthand with the paint and not much water, letting it dry between applications two corners curled dramactically at the edges. I painted leaving in the book

This gouache pad combines the best of a sketchbook with a block (watercolour paper often comes in blocks with the edges glued down so it won't misbehave while we paint). The block style keeps the paper flat-ish but when finished, we have a spiral-bound sketchbook. Very nice idea.The paper in this book is glued down on the top and bottom edges so that it doesn't curl up while we paint. When the painting is finished, I just run a palette knife gently under the page and it reveals the next page, ready to paint.But does it work?Yes, for the most part.In the photos, I used himi jelly gouache. The paper in this gouache pad is thinner than I am used to. Quite a bit thinner than watercolour paper. I was worried it wouldn't hold up to the paint but gave it a try anyway. When the paint is fairly dry (not much water added) the paper doesn't seem to mind at all. A wet wash (lots of water to very little paint), like I would for watercolour, caused the paper to wriggle around a bit, but once it dried, it calmed right down and was only slightly wavy. The glue really helped to keep it calm. The amount of water makes a difference to how much the paper reacts.There was no bleeding (paint/ink goes through the paper) through to the other side but there is some ghosting (where we can see the ink/paint from the back side of the paper but it didn't actually come through the paper). To me, it's enough ghosting that I wouldn't want to paint on both sides. I would also be worried about reactivating the paint on the other side too, so, I'm going to leave every other page blank. That means this pad will only give me 50 paintings, not 100 as I had hoped.Then again, the spiral-bound book makes it hard to paint on the reverse side.When the page is detached from the block (when we run a palette knife along to remove the glue top and bottom), it does curl up a bit but I think this will flatten out over time if the book is kept closed. To avoid this, maybe choose a book with a thicker paper. But I don't mind as this is my practice book.On the whole, I love it! It's perfect for someone like me who is new to gouache and doesn't really know what kind of paper to go with. The texture of the paper is fairly smooth compared to watercolour hard press, but not as smooth as hot press. Perfect tooth to hold gouache paint.The only downside - and this is true for any block-style paper - is that I can only work on one painting at a time. I might buy a second book so I can start sketching out the next painting while I wait for the other one to dry.And if the maker ever reads this - it would be epic if you included one of those plastic tools for separating the paper as it's easy for a clutz like me to damage the next paper when using a metal palette knife if I'm not paying attention.

It came stained under the shrink wrap. Sent it back.