Scholar Watercolour Cold Press 300gsm, 12 Sheets, Spiral, A4

A spiral-bound cold press pad that lets you fold pages right back, so you always have a flat, uninterrupted surface to paint on.

• 300gsm woodfree cellulose paper, cold press texture
• 12 sheets, spiral bound, A4 size
• Acid free and pH neutral
• Wire spine allows pages to rotate and lie completely flat, unlike a glued pad
• Suited to watercolour, gouache and light acrylic

The spiral binding is the main thing that sets this pad apart from the glued A4 pad elsewhere in this range: instead of sheets that stay bound along one stiff edge, the wire coil lets you fold the current page all the way back or rotate the whole pad, which is genuinely useful when you're painting standing up, working outdoors, or just want the book out of the way of your brush hand.

That flexibility also makes it easier to prop the pad open on an easel or table stand without the cover flopping shut mid-wash, and you can flip straight back to an earlier page to compare colour mixes side by side. Once a study is finished, the wire spine still holds every sheet in order, so the pad doubles as a simple running record of your practice.

Inside, it's the same balanced cold press texture used through Scholar's watercolour range, easy to layer washes on without losing fine detail entirely, so the binding is really the only decision to make here rather than the paper itself, and it's an easy one to make once you know how you like to work.