It was more of a challenge to fold such heavy paper, and then I weighed it down to help the folds set. The pentallic paper is great for how I use it. Not too heavy with water, but can take a light wash.

Kids are artists before we condition them out of it. Art is prioritized in our home. I have a 14 yo who is an avid sketcher. Her finished pieces get hung on the walls. Same with my other teen who only dabbles with tutorials once or twice a year. Something I noticed in our schools, which lack art classes, is that they are assigned to create art in other classes like science, english & social studies. So they are at least exposed to art supplies & graphic representation is shown to be important. It's interesting to me to incorporate art as opposed to separating it. But I definitely agree more art is needed, and more encouragement for young artists.

I haven't used too many watercolor journals, but recently tried the Pentalic Nature Sketch book. It's 25% cotton, 130lb/212gsm. Perfect for mixed media with a watercolor base. Also, quite affordable ~$14/50 sheets/100 pages. I also recently used a large, single sheet of arches cold press (100% cotton/140lb/300gsm) to make an accordion journal. It has 30 small squares to work on, so a strangely affordable "sketchbook" for Arches.