Mixed Media Mythical Land Map Making

1. Introduction: Do you enjoy exploring the possibilities of mixed media art making? Have you ever wished you could travel to a mythical land? Hi, I'm Elizabeth and welcome to my class Mixed Media Mythical Land Map Making. I'm a professionally trained artist and art educator, as well as a published author illustrator, and I love sharing my own artistic journey and creative expression and growth as an artist with my students and fellow creatives. I've been teaching classes on Skillshare since 2020, sharing my Creative approaches, ways that I break down art slumps and different approaches to media and technique and the creative process with my students, and I am super excited to share my newest class, mixed media Mythical Land mapmaking with you. In this class, we'll incorporate a variety of art materials and mixed media techniques to create our own mythical land map. This class is intended for creatives of all skill levels as a way to use mixed media art making in a new way, dust off maybe some old collage papers that you have created or collected that are lying around and explore some of the ways that we can work with mark making to give our maps some interesting geography and personality and mystery and magic and to incorporate our imaginations into our art practice as we create really fun mixed media art projects. By the end of this class, you'll have brainstormed ideas for your own mythical land. You'll have learned how to use collage as a foundation for imaginary mapmaking. Learned mixed media techniques to add mapmaking details, explored mark making to define sections of your mythical land, letting our imaginations and mark making potential run wild. Join me on this fun trip of mixed media art making as we bring our mythical lands to life. 2. Class Project: Okay. Thanks for joining me. We'll take a look at some map examples, as well as dive a little bit into the history of making, as we brainstorm ideas for personalizing our own mythical land maps. For this class, we'll be incorporating a variety of mixed media materials and techniques, but feel free to use whatever art supplies you have on hand. In the next lesson, we'll talk about some art supplies that you might want to have on hand, as well as a few key essential ones as we begin brainstorming and preparing to create our mythical land maps. See you there. 3. Materials: Okay. Let's talk about what materials you might want to use for class. The great thing about mixed media art making is that you can really work with whatever art supplies you have on hand. For this project, we'll be using collage materials to define our land masses. And then whatever drawing and painting supplies you have on hand can then be added to further enhance and add character and detail to your mythical land mass. So the materials for a mixed media class tend to vary widely, and a lot of them depend on what you have at home. And I highly encourage you to really kind of dig around and find some interesting things to work with. But the ones that we're going to definitely want to have on hand would be some watercolor or mixed media paper, something that can handle collaging onto it as well as drawing or painting back into it. We're going to do some brainstrmming. I also want to have some scrap paper or a sketchbook that I can brainstrm into. This sketchbook here works great for everything. And then we're going to be collaging. So we're going to need some decorative papers that you either find or you've created. Because we're creating mythical land maps, it doesn't really matter what colors you choose. My idea is to do an island. I want to find or create some blue paper for my background that I'm going to build everything up on. I'm going to want some green, some earth tones, maybe even some fun colored stuff. I'm just going to d through my different decorative textured papers in my collage dash and see what I have going there. And then because this is a little thicker, I'm going to be doing the bulk of my collaging with white liquid glue. But if your papers are thinner or you're using magazine images or construction paper, a glue stick might work just fine for you. So to glue this down, I'm going to get an old paint brush so that I can easily put that down, some scrap paper, so I can keep my work area clean. I'm going to be tearing all my papers, but if you wanted to have cleaner lines, feel free to grab a pair of scissors, then I might want to make some new paper. I haven't decided yet. So I've got my water colors on hand and a brush. Cup of water, some cloth, just so that I have the option to create a larger background for my ocean or some more decorative papers depending on where the idea takes me. And then for the mixed media elements, I'm going to use my fine liner, I've got a paint pen, a sharpie. I've got some acrylic markers, a white pasta because you just never know when you might want to put some white back into it as well as my colored pencils. You could also use soft pestel oil pastel, acrylic paint, ink. So when we get to the mark making and the mixed media element after we've built up our collage land masses, Feel free to get out anything that you have that you think would make for an interesting addition to your mythical land map. If you're interested in creating your own decorative textured papers for collage, you might want to check out some of my other Skillshare classes, as well as the art demonstration videos that I share on my YouTube channel. You can find links to suggested classes as well as my YouTube channel on the projects and resources section of our class. Let's head it over to our next lesson and brainstorm some mark making approaches we might want to take to defining the various sections of our maps. See you as soon. 4. Map Symbol Brainstorming: Okay. Maps have been an important part of human history dating back to what is believed to be the oldest surviving map, a Babylonian world map created in 600 B, which was a symbolic clay tablet map of the world. In the Pacific Islands and navigational maps such as this one, were created using sticks, plants, and shells to define the islands and ocean currents to help islanders navigate the waters around the Pacific islands. Paper maps have been created as people have explored and documented the types of geography they discovered, the mists they couldn't explain or legends they heard and shared that with others who followed in their footsteps. Authors of fantasy have created maps to define the imagined worlds of their characters. And we can draw from all of these as we find inspiration for our own mythical land maps. There's a couple of key things that you might want to think about when you're designing your map. But this is your map, so feel free to get as creative and imaginative as you possibly can. Maps are filled with markings to help communicate information. So what information do you want to share with someone who is considering exploring your mythical land? Do you want to have a compass on it, indicating direction? Is that compass going to be traditional north Southeast and West? Is your mythical land perhaps not even on this planet, and the direction you might indicate with a compass would be different because you're in a different part of the solar system? Who knows? It might be a key on your map. You can keep easily communicate to someone looking at your map, what the symbols that you've created represent, especially if you are going to other planets? What marks could you make to help define the geographic sections and various biomes that one might find if they explored your mythical land? What creatures live in and around your mythical land? So now we're going to brainstorm some ideas for symbols that we might want to incorporate on our map. So, the first thing I'm going to do is create a list of different types of geography, different types of vegetation, anything that I can think of that I might want to incorporate on a map or that I've remembered seeing on other maps and map keys so that I can have a great list of ideas to draw from as I really start developing and building up the character of my mythical land. So I've got mountains, hills, rocks, trees, or forest, water, flowers, berries, cliffs, kind of thinking about different ways to indicate elevation and big changes in elevation, sand. And then I'm going to go through and I'm going to create ways that I could depict that with some simple ink lines. There's a variety of different ways that we can do this. So really have some fun playing around with mark making and line to figure out ways that you can communicate to somebody looking at your map, what type of land it is and what different things they might find if they had traveled there to explore it. And I really wanted to come up with several different ways to depict each of these so that I could have a lot to pick and choose from within each category. And figuring that there were different types of trees. There were different kind of ways you could depict rocks. There were different types of hills, different ways we could depict the variety that one can find in mountains across the world. All the sort of ways. And then a lot of them were kind of stereotypical ways, you know, the little swoopy scallop shapes that are used to depict water. I also tried to think about ways that I could depict inland water versus ocean water and currents, perhaps was what I was going for with kind of the two parallel running lines. And then different ways you could depict flowers very simply with ink. And then as I had new ideas, I kind of kept jumping back around because as you're going to get into your brainstormming process, you're going to get even more inspiration and ideas, and you're going to have it grow and grow and grow. So I recommend exploring this step of the brainstorming process until you run out of ideas. And then you can even come back to it another time, too, because as we kind of think about things and kind of put it in the back of our minds, sometimes new things pop up. You notice I jumped up to the trees and I added a way to indicate a fruiting tree because that's kind of a significant thing on a map if one was looking for ways to sustain oneself. Clifts were kind of tricky, but I wasn't sure if I was going to use it, but I just thought it'd be kind of interesting to have different elevation changes on my map. And then I wanted to get into what animals might be there, what creatures one might find. So I've got some stereotypical images of different ways you can depict fish very simply. That's the other thing. As you're thinking about your map symbols, we want to go for simplicity. How can you with a very minimal amount of lines communicate to someone what's going on in a part of your map. So think about that, too, because you can get very detailed. Some maps are very ornate, but I would start with the most basic ideas for different ways to depict things and then you can add more elements as you go along. So have some fun with us. Brainstorm as many ideas as you can come up with. And then we'll move on to the next step of our project. Now that we brainstorm some symbols that we might want to include on our maps. We're going to head on over to the next lesson and begin peging our land masses. See you soon. 5. Collaging: First, we need to define our land and waterways using collage materials. So the first thing that I want to do is, I want to go through my collection of collage materials and pull out papers that might work for different types of land that I might want to include in my mythical land map, as well as water features, really anything that kind of speaks to me that could work for different types of geography. You could brainstorm this in a different way. You could kind of, you know, make a list if you prefer or kind of do some little sketches, kind of thinking of the different types of geography you might want to include in your mythical landmp. I really love to approach collage through an intuitive nature, and I love getting inspired by the type of collage materials that I have. So a lot of these papers are actually, I think all of these papers in this box are ones that I created using different watercolor techniques, watercolor and ink, playing around with acrylic, acrylic inks, ink inks. So I have quite a collection of different collage materials that I can draw from for this. But I did find that I don't have a lot of browns and oranges and yellows. So that was kind of a stretch for me to kind of find the little bits and pieces that had those. So the other thing you could do, if you don't have papers that would work for your idea for your mythical land, you could make some. And there's a lot of ways you can do that using whatever art supplies you have on hand. You can also look at magazines, and you can use construction paper. You can find some already patterned collage materials at the store or at resale shops. So lots of different ways you can work with fledge. You could even use, you know, brown paper bags from the store or packing materials that you might be used to kind of fill boxes that come in. So really kind of think about how you can creatively collect and curate collage materials for this portion of the class. So I'm just kind of I'm going to pull out anything that could be something, and then I'm going to organize them into color piles of like, what could be lush greenland, what could be beaches and rocks and different kind of coastal type pieces of paper. And then what could be water features and jungles however you want to organize it to I did decide that I wanted to create a new ocean background paper because I didn't have any more large blue decorative papers in my collection. So I'm just doing some wet on wet application with blue water color and a couple of different blue hues that I happen to have in my palette. And really getting up some nice juicy color. I'm trying to play with value variation so that it's not just a solid wash of blue. But if you like a solid wash of blue, feel free to use blue paper or to paint it in a way that gives you that blue wash. I love texture. So any chance I can play with texture, I'm going to take it. And then I wanted to do a little bit with splattering water so that I had some really cool blooms in the background. And then I decided to take my cloth and kind of pull up some of the areas where I had some puddling so that it could dry faster. And then while that was drying, I didn't want to stop mapping out my collage aspects for my picture. So I cut another piece of paper that was the same size as my watercolor background so that I could use that as a template. Almost like a collage sketch where I can kind of map out where things are going to go, brains from some ideas, and then translate that when my background ocean is dry when I go to glue down my pieces. So the next step for me was to start putting in different details and figuring out my composition on my page. So I'm tearing out papers from my stash just to kind of build up the basic island formations, because I knew I wanted to do a grouping of islands for my land. You wouldn't have to do an island. You could have it, you know, land coming off. The whole thing could be land. It wouldn't have to have any water at all if you didn't want it to. But I really liked what the idea of islands gave me as far as possibilities for what could be happening in my mythical land. So now I'm just taking different pieces of decorative papers, textured papers, and kind of tearing them out, letting it have a real organic feeling and intuitively building up different sections of my land. I did end up using some very textured papers for this. So I did find later on that limited me a little bit in defining my marks, but it was also really fun to use my decorative papers in this way. And I'm using pieces of decorative paper together that I wouldn't normally collage in a different scenario. So that was also fun because it allowed me to approach mixed media collage making in a way that was not common in the other ways that I had to incorporate collage into my mixed media art practice. So I'm just playing around, digging through finding different ways to combine it, and then rough sketching in some ideas of things I might want to add later when I get into the mark making portion. So I'm inspired by the brainstorming map symbols that I created in the previous lesson. I'm kind of thinking about how can I indicate currents? Where do I want to put marks to add more character to this, and how do I continue to personalize and add character and kind of complete the idea of my mythical land. So now my watercolor paper is dry. So I'm going to use some white liquid glue, and I'm going to use an old paper brush, and I'm going to gradually build up my collage. So you saw me move it over from the template paper to the actual paper. Some things got shifted between the two steps. That's okay. I didn't mean to take a picture of it when it was in template form, so I had a guide to follow, but that step got forgotten and the excitement of planning out my mythical land. So I'm just letting it evolve organically and kind of go loosely off of my original idea. Now, depending on how thick or thin your decorative paper is, you might be able to get away with a glue stick. My papers tend to be on watercolor and mixed media paper, so I tend to always use the white liquid glue and painted on so that I can guarantee I have some really good adhesion as I'm building up my collages. And then just lifting and putting things down and getting things settled for their final destination on my Mythical and map. And this step was really fun. It was really great to kind of commit to location and really start letting it come together. So just keep blowing and getting everything settled in along the way so that everything is attached really well so that we can let it dry and then get to the map symbol Mark making in the next lesson. And then once I had everything glued down, I used my template paper to put over the top and kind of furnish it, as well as flipping it upside down and furnishing again so that everything was adhered really, really well for the final step. And then I'm going to let this step of the project before moving on to adding in the map symbols and other mixed media techniques. Our next lesson. We are going to be using Inc to define different sections of our map. Using the marks and the different map symbols that we came up with in our brainstorming lesson. Then we're also going to work with any other mixed media materials that you have to further define your land mass, what's happening in the ocean. Maybe you want to add some creatures, either on your land in the water. Maybe you want to have some indication of currents or types of water that one might encounter if they were sailing to your land mass. Let's head on over to our next lesson to add the finishing details to our mythical land maps. See sil. Okay. 6. Mixed Media Map Markings: Now that our collage lands are dry, we're ready to further define our maps and their various parts using mixed media techniques. I refer back to your brainstorming sheet at any point in time to get ideas for what ones would actually work with the land masses that you've created as well as any new ones that might come up. I'm all for intuitive inspiration and in the moment organic creating. So anything that comes to mind, go ahead and add it to your map because it is your world, and you get to make it whatever you want it to be. As you think about different things that you might want to add to your map, you might want to consider, are there elevation changes? Are there dangers? Are there mysteries that someone might come across? Is there treasure? Who knows. So really let your imaginations run wild as you bring your mythical land maps to life. Now I'm going to use my map symbol brainstorming list and sketches as inspiration for adding marks to my mythical and map college. So I knew I wanted to have a compass and I knew my world was existing somewhere on Earth. So I went ahead and put in and created a design for a north South East West compass. Using inspiration from other compasses on other maps that I've seen. I wanted to keep it fairly simple, but I also wanted to have a bold graphic element to it. So I just free handed in the circles. You could also trace them if you were concerned about the neatness of that, and then I went in and put in the letters to indicate each of the directions. Then I'm going to get out some colored pencils. I really loved this soft pink and orange with the high contrast black splattered ink decorative paper. But when I thought about it as a sandy beach, which is what I kind of wanted it to indicate on my map, the black was just a little too intense. So I decided to use some colored pencil. Color over that and add another layer to it, and it works perfectly because it muted out that black. So I still had that bold contrast there. It just wasn't so overpowering and made it kind of sit back and become a less dominant collage element. So that's something really great you can consider is how can you layer things on to change the intensity of your collage papers. Colord pencil is a great idea for this because depending on how thickly you put it on, it can have more of a transparent nature to it. So it ended up beefing up the color of the watercolor that I had put down on that paper, but then it also allowed out the black marks and created a really lovely kind of ghosting image that was one of my favorite parts of this collage. And then I wanted to do a little bit more. I wanted the torn paper because I wanted the organic nature of land and really didn't want to have the smoothness because I wanted it to feel rugged and kind of freshly unexplored. But that leaves you with the rough edge of the paper, which sometimes is great. But in this case, I felt like it was a little jarring. So I decided to do something similar with the colored pencil that I had done for the sandy beaches and go in with colors that match the textured paper and color over the white, any areas where it was kind of creating a jarring contrast for me that I didn't like. And then it became another part of the landscape for the greens and the oranges and yellows. And then I did try to kind of add some different variety to some of my less exciting textured papers just to put it in a colored pencil, to add some more of my land definition. You can really go as far with the different media as you want to, and there's so many varieties to mixed media that you can incorporate in a project like this. It's really fun to see how each of them adds a new element to this. Now, because of my collage papers for this one, were so textured, I did decide to go with a sharpie over a fine liner for putting in my different texture. So I'd have really bold water lines for those inland lakes. I've put in some dots and speckling to indicate sand the sandy beaches and some of the other areas. I could have put that over where I kind of lightened up the peachy sandy beaches too, but I wanted that to be a different feel. And then I'm just using different size rough circle organic shapes to indicate rocky beaches as well, because I wanted to have a lot of variation, which is why I went with so many different collage papers in my initial step of this project. And then I wanted to just continue to further that and add more character and definition to my land forms. And then I'm doing because I did a lot of repetition of different types of papers to create a unity to my mythical land. I wanted to mirror that also in my mark making, so that it really kind of came together as a group of islands that were connected by their shared geography elements. And that's just something to consider when you're making any artwork, you know, repetition and connections that you can make across your page so that you have a piece that feels cohesive and feels unified while still having as much variety and variation as you like. Now, when I went in with my trees, I did feel a little unprepared for this step. I think I could have taken a little more time to make some decisions about that. But I also had a lot of different green types of collage papers that I had put down. So that became my guiding line as far as different types of trees and vegetation that could exist on these islands. I do sort of wish that I had gone in with a fine liner for this part and made them a little bit more delicate. But I do like the unity of the sharpie across all the marks that I've made on my map, and I do like that those bold lines really stand out against the texture papers beneath them. Then I wanted to create some definition in my waterways and kind of indicate that this connecting channel between islands wasn't necessarily such a safe one. There's some big rocks in the water in my imagination for this area. And there's some safe, easy parts you can navigate if you were in the water. You know, traversing this area of my land and then some danger zones that you'd want to watch out for. And those were indicated based on the type of collaged land I had. I figure if there were rocky beaches, there were probably rocks out in the water, too, potentially. And then it's kind of like a safe connection there on the top right, and then I want to indicate that there were some fish in the bottom left. And that's kind of my safe water area. Figure there's no rocks there. It's sandy beaches. It's a great place to get some fish. If you need some food and sustenance, while you were out exploring this mythical land. And then I wanted to add even more to it. So I decided to go in with a fine liner for this part, just to create some current lines just to help give some motion and help to unify the whole map, but also just add another layer of communication to anyone who was looking at it and kind of trying to decide what type of land is this? What are some things I need to consider. And then for one final mixed media touch, I decided to do some elevation lines to kind of show that the orangey yellow were areas that had raised elevation in a different sort of way. So I just really like that line element to it. And then I wanted to also add some mountains where I had some darker textured paper on some of the spots just because I really liked that mark when I created it in my brainstumming map, and I found some places where it worked on this one. So at this point, you can add as much as you want to. And then whenever it feels finished and resolved, that's a good place to step. And I am super happy with how this turned out. I absolutely love this map, and I'm really excited to make more of these mixed media collage maps and explore other lands that could exist in my imagination. So have so much fun adding the mixed media details go as far and wide with materials as you want to and share in the discussion section and in your class projects, what you did and how you think about it, and give us all some inspiration for how we can continue to explore mythical land maps ourselves. I am so happy with how my mythical andmap turned out, and I think this k becomes something that I do on a regular basis. It was really fun. I hope you also had fun brainstorming and bringing to life your mythical land maps. Let's turn over to the next lesson and wrap up the glass. See you soon. 7. Final Thoughts: Okay. Thank you so much for taking this class and exploring mixed media mythical land mapmaking with me. I hope you had as much fun as I did and that mapmaking, mythical land mapmaking and any art farm might become a continued part of your artistic practice. The other idea I had is that this could become part of a sketchbook practice. I did mine rather large because I like working big because that gives me lots of flexibility with the options I have for collaging and mixed media art making. But I could easily see this being something in a small sketchbook. Even a theme sketchbook would be so fun. If you just collage down a couple of sheets of paper and then create a little mini maps. That is a really fun idea. I think I might have to do that pretty soon because this was so much fun and incorporated all of the things that I love about art making. At once, I'd love to see how your mythical and maps turned out and your brainstorming sheets, anything you want to share. So please head it over to the projects and Resources section of class and click the button that says, create a project. You can upload as many images as you like. You can add text, you can title it. You can share as much as you want to with myself as well as a fellow classmates. And if you like me, find yourself on a mythical land mapmaking spree, Feel free to add to your project and update us on your land maps and where we might find you exploring your imagination anytime you like. And if you update the cover image for your project, I'll get a new notification to make sure that I can pop on over and check out the lands that you're creating and how much fun you're having with your imagination, collage, and mixed media mark making. I greatly appreciate if you took the time to leave a review. Student feedback is the best way for me to grow as a teacher, and I'm a very reflective teacher. I love to hear what my students thought about my classes as I consider ways to tweak and improve and enhance past classes as well as all the future fun ideas I have for future Skillshare classes. I really appreciate the opportunity to leave a review from the student side. Because when I take a class, I use that as an opportunity to think back to all that I've learned, the creative journey that I went on, what I might apply to the future and how I've grown, as well as to give the teacher feedback on how I think the class went and what I really enjoyed, as well as even suggestions for what they might add to a class to further enhance it because we are always looking for ways to make our classes even better. And it's a really fun way to engage and kind of wrap things up as you're ready to move on to the next art adventure. So I hope you'll consider leaving a review. And if you have any questions along the way or comments or anything that you want to share while you're working on your mythical land maps. Don't hesitate to pop on over to the discussion section of class and post there. I will quickly get back to you with a reply, a comment, a suggestion, encouragement, whatever it is that you need. It's a wonderful way to connect while you're in the process of taking a class. So I hope to chat with you there real soon. If you post your mythical land maps to Instagram, I would love it if you tagged me so that I could follow your art journey over there. It's a really fun way to connect outside of class if that's a social media platform that you're on, and I know that I use it to document my artistic journey and share it with anyone who wants to stop by and check it out. Feel free to tag me at Elizabeth underscore Welfare anytime you post Mythical Land Maps. You can also follow my art journey and continue to connect with me through my YouTube channel. On there, I have art demonstrations, I have timelaps videos, I have art dates that I go on where I'm exploring different things in our area and anywhere I travel to that has an art twist. A things art really. Or what you can find over there. So that's under Elizabeth Welfare on YouTube. And if you pop on over there, be sure to click the subscribe button so that you'll get notified when I add new videos, so we can continue to stay connected through our creative journeys. If you want to stay up to date on my newest Skillshare classes, be sure to click the Follow button, and I'll see you next time. 8. Bonus: Mythical Map Sketchbook: So I had so much fun creating my mythical mixed media maps for my skillshare class that I had this idea of doing a mythical map sketchbook. So I wanted to create a handmade sketchbook using some of the sketchbook techniques that I really enjoy doing for handmade bookmaking. And then within those pages, I wanted to create miniature maps. So each spread is an ocean with some collaged islands. So taking the ideas. So this takes the ideas from my mythical Mixed Media map class and turns it into a sketchbook format. So here is the process for how I created my mixed media map sketchbook. So at this point, I'm going to start putting together my pages to create my sketchbook. But actually, there was an easier way to do this that I should have done that comes from my mixed media collage sketchbook class that's on Skill Share. So if you haven't checked that one out, check that one out because there's some really great it's a great class in itself, but it also shows you a little bit easier way to put together your sketchbook. The way that I did this one, I was really trying to get all of the backside of my watercolor papers to vanish into the folded pages. So I glued them together, and then I was going to do a perfect binding for the sketchbook binding. But I don't know if it was the glue I used or the humidity or what it was, but I did run into a little bit of trouble actually getting all of the pages to stick together. And if I had just used the process from my mixed media sketchbook class, it would have gone a lot easier. So definitely check that one out if you want to learn another way to construct a sketchbook. The same principles, you don't have to worry about the binding the pages adhere to themselves in a really great way. So while I'm waiting for my binding to try for my sketchbook pages, I'm going to start tearing out some collage materials. I'm looking for interesting papers to create my island and land mass shapes that are the foundation for the starts of my mythical maps. So now the fun can really begin. So what I'm going to do is the inside of each spread of the sketchbook is an ocean. So I deliberately created these blue giant sheets of paper that I then cut down and assembled into the sketchbook. And now I'm using my decorative collage paper that I've made in different for different reasons and fun experiments and stuff to begin creating the land masses. So this too is similar to collage being a jumping off inspiration that is done in a different way in the mixed media collage sketchbook class. But here, I'm merging that idea with a little bit of more intention in the collage materials that I'm choosing with the map class in mind. So I'm just creating some really interesting collages. Very simple. I've got the ocean and now I'm putting the land masses. And then after that, I can build up the land mass details as much as I want to with additional collage, and then I can also add any other mixed media materials that I want to to define my map. So I can create different depths in my ocean and I can add foliage and simples from different maps to kind of represent what type of land and ocean these pages represent and just have a lot of fun. Stylizing it and playing with it and embellishing it and really creating some beautiful sketchbook spreads that look really cool as an abstract element, but then also have some nods to map making and the artistry of that. And now I'm going to start going in with the mixed media elements. So I'm going to be using sharpie, colored pencil. You can paint back into your scotch Book spreads. You can get out your paint markers, fine liners, really anything you have on hand that would add an interesting element to further advance the mixed media collage side of this and define whatever elements of your maps that you want to. I really loved the idea with this particular spread with kind of alluding to things but not being as literal for most of the map and just really enjoying the play of color and texture and mark making, as I kind of built up the idea of these land masses and the water around them. So the original idea for this sketchbook was that I would collage into the spreads, and then I would circle back to them to add in the mixed media details, so I could just like the mixed media sketchbook class. I could just kind of open to a spread and based off that, go for it. So I have some spreads where I've just collaged into it, and those collages are just kind of waiting to be brought to life as mythical maps. And then I have the two spreads that I'm doing in this video where I went straight from the collage into the mixed media details. So however you do it doesn't really matter. I have the option to do both because I still have some spreads where I haven't collaged any additional paper into to define land masses, and it's really fun to kind of let your collage materials inspire you. And then as far as how you tear them and how you glue them and what types of land formations you create, and then use that new composition that you've created with your collaging to inspire the mapmaking elements at. So I really enjoy this process for the class that I created on Skill Share, and I am loving this sketchbook as another unique way to have an easy way to kind of get a jump start on creating. Whenever I have some time, I can circle back to it. I can pause it, I can finish a whole spread, and move on. I can really spend as much or as little time on these as I want to and just have some fun and kind of do a thematic sketchbook this way. So thanks for checking out my video and seeing how I translated the idea of my mythical map projects to my mythical Map sketchbook. If you're watching this over on YouTube, don't forget to give the video a like, subscribe for more videos in the future, and I'll see you next time.