Strathmore Mixed Media Paper Review

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!