Mixed Media Florals And Botanicals For Your Sketchbook

Mixed media simply means using a variety of art supplies together in one art piece, namely pen and paint, pen and collage, ink and pencil, etc. Mixed media is a great way to add color to your sketchbook drawings, though depending on the thickness of your paper you will need to do this with some forethought. My sketchbook is really just for drawing, meaning the pages are relatively light weight and cannot handle markers or watercolors without bleeding through to the other side. (One can always fix this by gluing together pages or gluing a page on top of the bleed.) But not to worry, there are several ways around this and many products that you can use to add color to your sketchbook, even if the pages aren’t watercolor paper. Believe me, I’ve been doing this now for months and the results are great. Best of all, once you start using mixed media your sketches can come alive with color and pattern and even a little texture! And as I’ve written previously, using paint or gluing on little scrap of paper is a great way to fix sketchbook mistakes and create something unexpected from those mistakes. Okay, lets explore the idea of using mixed media in a sketchbook!

I’ll admit, I didn’t plan this page as a mixed media page, but rather as an ink drawing of the roses in my garden, but, as often happens the sketch was a bit too busy, so I used blue paint to conceal some of the background. Then I realized that I’d overdone the black pen lines on some of the leaves, so i painted them, ah yes but then everything looked too similar so I used a bit of book page collage to add interest, and voila, I love it! If your sketchbook, like mine, can’t handle markers or watercolors, don’t fret, just use acrylic paint, colored pencils and even gouche. Yes, the pages will buckle slightly, but most importantly the other side of the page will remain blank with no leakage! If you really really need to use markers in your sketchbook, you can opt to gesso the pages, or paint a background of acrylic paint (same effect, basically) which essentially seals the page, just make sure you have 100% coverage or leakage will occur.

To fix small leaks on the back side of the page,you can employ paper collage or paint, and that can be the start of something unexpected.

The page above here also started as a sketch that didn’t quite turn out, so I used a white gel pen on kraft paper to cover up a botanical leaf drawing that I didn’t love, and then added paint, and I just love the modern and calm feeling these pages have.