It's nice to have a sturdy surface to work on without going directly on mat board. In fact, working on this stuff is rather like mat board - only this is thicker and has archival papers glued on to its surface. I can only speak to the finer textured version, but there are versions with more tooth than what I got.



Pros:

• takes a lot of water and eventually dries out flat or only a little bowed
• takes a lot of layers of coloured pencil without tearing or piling of paper
• took the odourless mineral spirits I was using to blend the pencil with
• comes in black and white

Cons:

• it's not the easiest to get the boards off the glue binder without the edges curling up and fraying as you see in the photo

I had actually soaked one in water for just a few moments, so not long enough to saturate it completely; but it was long enough to make it good and wet. It did come out bowed, but that can be combatted by laying the board between two flat, heavy items flatten the board as it dries.

The issue with the tearing and fraying of paper when you remove the board from the binding, could be solved by the application of some acrylic medium both before and after the piece is done.

I've worked over and over some areas with a lot of pencil, and this stuff is holding up nicely - both oil- and wax-based pencils. Of course, I'm not "scrubbing' into the paper with a heavy hand, but multiple layers can produce a lot of piling on paper depending on its quality. So if you were looking to use this for pencil work, I'd say it's a safe bet. And given the ability it has to take water, I'd give it a go for acrylic and watercolour as well. I don't know about oil, as it's not a medium I've touched in over twenty years.