Got my Aquarius II paper and new paints yesterday (finally! it took them like 9 days). The AqII is pretty much everything I hoped it would be. It's much smoother than cold press and so I can use even my finest dip pens on it (they just scratched the cold press all to hell). It's also a LOT thinner and absorbs liquid differently, so everything takes longer to dry and lifting works a lot better. Longer to dry may sound like a negative, but it allows very smooth washes for both land and sea.
Unfortunately ink also takes longer to dry and I was impatient so I had a bit of ink runnage in my little experiment. Wet in wet tends to fan a LOT so you have to be careful. But color pulls (think Gimp/PS smudge tool) extrenely well.
On buckling: supppsedly you can paint on AqII without stretching. I suppose you could say this but it does wave up a bit. I'm prpbably going to tape it down in the future, but not the massive tape job one needs for stretching; just something to keep the edges down since edge curlung is the most annoying part of the slight waving the paper does.
The paints are awesome. I got Daniel Smith PrimaTek in Serpentine and Transparent Yellow Ochre and they are both extremely close to the website's swatches and look great on the paper.
I'll probably scan last night's experiment tonight, but no judging lol ... it was total "let's see what happens if I do this..." so it looks like crap.
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