Art paper for kids: easel rolls, mixed-media pads and sketchbooks

Our recommendations

best for home easels

Melissa & Doug Easel Paper Roll

Seventy-five feet of paper keeps a home easel stocked for months. Someone has to tear each sheet off by hand, and the tube needs more shelf space than a pad.

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Worth knowing.

• At 75 feet, one roll covers months of daily drawing and painting.
• Tempera soaks into the sturdy paper instead of going straight through to the table.
• Its 17-inch width is sized for a standard floor easel.

best for watercolor and paint

Canson XL Mixed Media Pad

The sheets are thick and textured, and for paint-heavy projects that earns the higher cost per page. The pad is big, though, and awkward on a small lap desk.

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Worth knowing.

• Canson rates the 160 gsm sheets for watercolor and acrylic without excessive warping.
• Because the tape binding runs along the top edge, a page lies flat while a kid paints on it.
• A pad holds sixty sheets, enough to stretch across siblings or a classroom.

Community discussions: r/ArtistLounge · r/Gouache

best everyday drawing pad

Melissa & Doug Drawing Paper Pad

Crayons and colored pencils look good on this light, backpack-size pad. Wet paint and heavy marker will buckle the pages.

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Worth knowing.

• The 9-by-12 size fits most kids’ art portfolios and storage boxes.
• Crayon and colored pencil look vivid on the bright white paper.
• It barely weighs anything, so the fifty-sheet pad can ride along to restaurants and a sibling’s activities.

best for travel

OOLY Carry Along Sketchbook

The OOLY’s hard cover and elastic band keep drawings flat in a bag. It has few pages and suits dry media only, so a bigger pad still belongs at home.

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Worth knowing.

• Small enough, at 5 by 7 inches, for a stroller basket or the pocket on the back of a car seat.
• The hard cover keeps pages from bending in a bag or during a restaurant wait.
• The elastic band holds the cover closed, so loose drawings don’t slide out.

How I narrowed it down

• Lined up dimensions, sheet counts and roll length for all four, then asked where each one gets used, from the easel at home to the back seat of the car.
• Paper descriptions and age labels came from each product page, read with preschoolers and elementary-age kids in mind.
• The Canson pad and the easel roll both make wet-media claims. We held those against what kids actually put on paper, which is tempera, marker and glue.
• For the OOLY sketchbook and the Melissa & Doug drawing pad, the question was travel: how they’re bound, and whether they survive restaurants and waiting rooms.

I'm Matt, a dad of two boys. If we've used something at home, the card says personally tested. The rest I read up on. I keep a weekly list of kids' product recalls. How I pick.