Artist Reply: My absolute favorite paper to do portraits on is Canson watercolor paper-- it may be cheap, but it's by far the best textured paper for graphite and charcoal. It sucks for watercolor, but I love it for drawings-- the portraits of the children I did ( the ones you thought were my earlier works) were not done on Canson because I ran out-- I can definitely tell the difference the paper makes for conveying value and scale for sure.