Tinted Bockingford NOT Watercolour Paper: A Comprehensive Guide to Its Features and Benefits

For artists seeking a reliable and versatile surface, Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper stands out as a remarkable choice. Manufactured by St Cuthberts Mill in England, this mould-made paper combines archival quality with a distinctive texture, offering a unique blend of performance and aesthetic appeal. Available in a range of subtle tints—blue, cream, eggshell, grey, and oatmeal—this paper elevates artwork by providing an instant mood-setting backdrop. Whether you’re a professional artist or an enthusiastic beginner, understanding the properties of this paper can transform your creative process. This article delves into its key features, practical applications, and finer details, ensuring you have all the information needed to make the most of this exceptional paper.​

Display of Tinted Bockingford NOT paper tints: blue, cream, eggshell, grey, oatmeal, alongside the standard white variant.

Technical Specifications and Durability

Material Quality: Built to Last

​Crafted from 100% high alpha cellulose, Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper is acid-free and buffered with calcium carbonate, ensuring long-term stability. Its pH-neutral composition and absence of optical brightening agents guarantee that colours remain stable and resistant to fading when exposed to light. Rated at 140lb (300gsm), the paper is robust enough to handle heavy washes without buckling, provided it’s stretched or taped as recommended by St Cuthberts Mill. This archival quality ensures that your artwork endures, making it a trusted choice for pieces intended for display or sale.

Practical Specifications

​Available in the following sizes:

• Full imperial sheets measuring 30 x 22 inches (76 x 56 cm)
• Half imperial sheets measuring 15 x 22 inches (38 x 56 cm) (Ken Bromley art store Only)
• Quarter imperial sheets measuring 11 x 15 inches (28 x 38 cm) (Ken Bromley art store Only)

Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper features rotary-trimmed edges for a clean, professional finish. Its cold-pressed surface strikes a balance between smoothness and texture, providing grip for pigment without the roughness of a “Rough” finish. Internally sized and wood-free, it maintains structural integrity under wet conditions, though stretching is advised for watercolorists using heavy washes. The paper’s 300gsm weight offers durability without excessive bulk, making it manageable for both studio and plein air work.

Visit the official St Cuthbert's Mill Bockingford NOT website page

Versatility Beyond Watercolour

​While designed for watercolour, Tinted Bockingford’s utility extends to a variety of media. Its texture and strength make it an excellent drawing paper, accommodating pencils, charcoal, gouache, pastel, pen and ink, and even printmaking. The tinted backgrounds enhance these applications, offering a fresh alternative to stark white surfaces. Artists have noted its tolerance for multiple layers of coloured pencils and its compatibility with erasers, achieving professional finishes suitable for gallery exhibition. This versatility broadens its appeal, catering to mixed-media artists and those exploring diverse techniques.

Close-up of the distinctive cold-pressed (NOT) texture on Tinted Bockingford paper, showcasing its unique surface quality.

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Key Features of Tinted Bockingford NOT Watercolour Paper

Exceptional Pigment Retention: A Standout Feature

One of the most compelling attributes of Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper is its extraordinary ability to capture and hold pigment. Artists using high-quality pencils, will find that even a light touch yields vibrant, saturated colour transfer. This characteristic minimises the effort required to achieve bold, impactful hues, making it an efficient choice for detailed works like portraits or intricate illustrations. The paper’s surface, created using natural woollen felts, provides a random, cold-pressed (NOT) texture that enhances pigment adhesion, ensuring colours remain vivid and true without excessive layering.

Tinted Options: Setting the Mood

​Unlike traditional white watercolour papers, Tinted Bockingford offers five distinct hues that add an immediate atmospheric dimension to your work. The transparency of watercolour paint means the paper’s base colour influences both painted and unpainted areas, allowing artists to subtly alter the mood or time of day depicted. Blue evokes serene twilight scenes, grey suggests moody, overcast skies, while cream and oatmeal lend warmth to portraits or landscapes. Eggshell provides a soft, neutral base that complements a wide range of subjects. These tints, though pale, invite experimentation, making the paper a favourite for artists aiming to infuse their pieces with emotional depth from the outset.

Seamless Blending: Effortless Transitions

Blending is where Tinted Bockingford truly excels, setting it apart from many other papers in its class. The surface allows for smooth, effortless transitions between colours, requiring minimal pressure or manipulation. In a practical test with a portrait, initial layers of skin-tone colours blended seamlessly when adjusted with a secondary tone. However, a word of caution: the paper’s strong pigment retention can pose challenges with opaque blending tools. For instance, using Derwent Drawing’s Chinese white to blend proved problematic, as its opacity overwhelmed underlying tones due to the paper’s receptive nature. This unique trait—while a strength—requires careful selection of blending mediums to avoid oversaturation. Opting for less opaque tones or tools can yield harmonious results, preserving the artwork’s intended subtlety.

Initial stage of a coloured pencil portrait on grey-tinted Bockingford NOT paper, prior to blending

Finished coloured pencil portrait on grey-tinted Bockingford NOT paper, showcasing seamless blending results

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​The paper’s capacity to accept multiple layers without losing integrity is a boon for artists who build complexity over time. Unlike many surfaces that resist additional pigment as layers accumulate, Tinted Bockingford remains responsive, allowing for rich, multi-dimensional compositions. Should mistakes occur, its excellent colour-lifting abilities shine through—pigment erases easily, offering a forgiving canvas for refinement. In one instance, an erroneous application of white pencil lifted effortlessly, enabling a swift correction with an alternative tone. This adaptability makes it ideal for both meticulous planning and spontaneous experimentation.

Layering and Correction: A Forgiving Surface

Enhanced Layering Capacity

​Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper demonstrates a remarkable ability to accommodate extensive layering, distinguishing it as a standout medium for artists working with varied pencil grades. This surface readily accepts both soft pencils—ideal for establishing base layers and backgrounds—and harder pencils suited to rendering fine details, without reaching a point of saturation where pigment begins to slide off. In our experience, most papers exhibit a threshold beyond which additional layers become increasingly difficult to apply effectively. However, Tinted Bockingford defies this norm, maintaining its receptiveness even as colours accumulate. This exceptional performance stems from its superior pigment retention, which eliminates the need for heavy-handed applications, allowing for a fluid and effortless buildup of numerous layers—a quality we have rarely encountered in other papers.

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Chaffinch on Grey Tinted Bockingford NOT Watercolour Paper using Derwent Drawing pencils

Upon initial evaluation, one of the most striking attributes we observed was the exceptional manner in which the paper captures and retains pigment. For the Chaffinch portrait illustrated above, we employed the Derwent Drawing pencils, and were notably impressed by the minimal effort required to achieve robust colour transfer onto the surface. The paper’s receptive quality ensures that even a light application yields impressive saturation, making it an ideal medium for artists seeking efficiency and depth in their work. When exploring the blending capabilities, it facilitates seamless blending with remarkable ease, requiring only minimal manipulation to achieve smooth transitions between hues.

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Female Portrait on Grey Tinted Bockingford NOT Watercolour Paper using Caran d'Ache Luminance and Derwent Drawing pencils

For our second trial, we chose a vibrant portrait. We began by laying down the foundational colours constituting the skin tones of the portrait. Initially, we opted to blend these tones using Derwent Drawing’s Chinese white. However, this proved to be an oversight on our part. Given the paper’s exceptional pigment adhesion—previously noted as a strength—the opaque nature of the Chinese white overwhelmed and saturated the underlying colours, muting the subtleties we had intended to preserve.

Combination of dry blending and Zest-it solvent blending, using Derwent Drawing pencils and Caran d’Ache Luminance on Tinted Bockingford NOT paper.

​This experience was unprecedented in our work with various pencil ranges, as typically, the challenge lies in layering additional colours as the surface becomes less receptive with each application. In contrast, this paper demonstrates a unique capacity to accept multiple layers effortlessly, maintaining its integrity and responsiveness throughout the process. Recognising our misstep, we promptly adjusted our approach. The white pencil, fortunately, erased with ease—a testament to the paper’s versatility and forgiveness—allowing us to refine our technique without compromising the artwork. We then selected an alternative tone for blending, which proved far more harmonious with the existing colours and enabled us to achieve the desired effect.

Blending with Zest-it on Tinted Bockingford NOT paper

Female portrait on Tinted Bockingford NOT paper, demonstrating Zest-it watercolour pen blending alongside unblended pencil work

​Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper proves to be an exemplary surface for combining Zest-it pencil blend with coloured pencils, yielding impressive results for artists seeking refined textures and expansive coverage. Its exceptional pigment retention ensures that the pencils’ colours adhere vividly to the surface, creating a robust foundation that enhances the effectiveness of the Zest-it solvent. When applied, this blending medium produces a remarkably smooth finish, facilitating effortless transitions across larger areas and enabling the creation of soft, tonal backgrounds. This synergy between the paper’s receptive qualities and the solvent’s blending capabilities allows artists to achieve a polished, seamless effect with minimal effort, making it an ideal choice for both detailed compositions and atmospheric expanses.

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Art Insights and Availability

User Insights: Real-World Performance

​Feedback from artists underscores the paper’s strengths and quirks. Many praise its subtle tints and quality at an affordable price point, noting its suitability for portraiture and atmospheric landscapes. However, some have observed that the tints are less saturated than expected, requiring adjustments in technique to maximize their effect. Packaging issues, such as occasional dents in shipping, suggest a need for improved protection, though these rarely impact the final mounted piece. Overall, users appreciate its forgiving nature and professional-grade results, often citing it as a go-to for both practice and exhibition-quality work.

Availability and Considerations

Tinted Bockingford is widely available through art supply retailers like Jackson’s Art Supplies and Bromleys in the UK, though some regions, such as the US, report difficulty sourcing the tinted option. Offered in single sheets or packs, it’s accessible for artists wanting to test its capabilities. Priced competitively for its quality, it strikes a balance between premium cotton papers like Saunders Waterford and more budget-friendly options, making it a practical choice for regular use.

If you are looking to purchase some of this paper, you can click the links below. Both Ken Bromley and Jackson's Art ship worldwide, but be aware that shipping may be expensive.

KEN BROMLEY'S ART SUPPLIES

jackson's art

​Tinted Bockingford NOT watercolour paper is confirmed to be vegan-friendly, making it an ethical choice for artists mindful of animal-derived materials. Produced by St Cuthberts Mill in the UK, this paper is mould-made from 100% high alpha cellulose and internally sized with a synthetic, animal-free sizing agent, avoiding the use of gelatin commonly found in some traditional papers. While its distinctive cold-pressed (NOT) texture is created using natural woollen felts, this process does not incorporate animal products into the paper itself, ensuring it aligns with vegan standards.

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Please share this article with fellow artists or enthusiasts who might benefit from exploring Tinted Bockingford NOT paper’s unique qualities.

We’ve explored the unique qualities of Tinted Bockingford NOT paper—from its pigment retention to its blending prowess. Have you tried this paper in your own projects? Share your experiences or favourite techniques in the comments below—we’d love to hear from you!

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