This month’s My Fave Monday Feature is a paper that has been in my arsenal for a while now. As a mixed media artist, I’m always looking for paper that will can handle all the mediums I want to use together. When I did my first 30 Day Art Challenge I knew I wanted to mix wet and dry media together, so I tried out Strathmore’s 400 Series Mixed Media Paper. Luckily for me this paper comes in a pad of 15 sheets that are 6”x8” which was perfect for the scale I was working in. This paper has held up great with anything I have used on it. It’s a 140 lb heavy weight paper that works well with watercolor, gouache, acrylic, graphite, pen & ink, colored pencil, marker, pastel and collage and all those combined together.
Pros:
- comes in a variety of standard sizes
- also available in Strathmore’s Visual Journal, 500, 300, and 200 series
- vellum surface provides enough tooth to hold wet media but is still smooth enough to use within dry media when you want a sleeker finish
- holds wet media well and dries with little to no page curl
Cons:
- not totally ideal, in my opinion, for colored pencil rendering unless you like a lot of tooth
- you only get 15 sheets in a pad 🙁 (which is sad because I love it so much)
If you like working with mixed media I would really recommend giving this paper a try. The thing I really loved was that when using acrylic paint, the paper would flatten down when dry. In some cases you may want to tape the edges down when working with a lot of water or a heavy amount of paint. Generally speaking though the paper returns to being flat once dry with I think is a great feature!
For more info visit Strathmore’s website here:
https://www.strathmoreartist.com/mixed-media/400-series-mixed-media.html
Please Note: I am in no way being paid to promote this product. The opinions in the blog post are my own.
