32 Collage Drawing Ideas Mixing Paper Scraps, Doodles and Little Stories

Collage drawing is the easiest way to fill a sketchbook page without staring at blank white paper, because half the page arrives already made. A torn magazine edge, a bit of map, an old receipt: glue it down first, then let your fineliner finish the story with a few drawn lines. The paper does the heavy lifting and your pen just adds the character.

Below are 32 pages built exactly that way, from a simple paper sea with drawn boats to a botanical print buzzing with drawn bees. Each one uses scraps you likely already have in a drawer, and every page is small enough to finish in one sitting.

Start the whole collage habit with a paper scrap sea, since it only asks for torn strips and a steady drawing hand. Tear three or four strips from blue, teal and cream paper, book pages work too, and glue them in wavy horizontal bands across the lower half of the page, overlapping the edges slightly.

Once the glue sets, pick up your fineliner and draw one or two simple sailboat shapes sitting on the torn lines: a triangle sail, a curved hull, a tiny flag. Add short dash marks for waves where paper meets paper so the drawn lines and the torn edges read as one sea instead of two separate things.

The common slip here is drawing boats too large for the torn bands, which makes them look stuck on rather than floating. Keep each boat under an inch tall and let the paper strips, not the drawing, carry most of the page.

If you do not have blue paper, torn pages from an old notebook dipped lightly in diluted blue ink work just as well.

You Will Need

• torn scrap paper in blue and cream tones

Palette: Prussian Blue, Payne’s Grey, Cream, Burnt Sienna

Flip through an old magazine or catalog page and cut out a dress shape, something with a nice silhouette, a full skirt or a simple shift. Glue it onto the page at a slight angle, leaving room above for a head and below for legs.

Draw the girl’s figure around the cut dress in fineliner: a simple oval head, thin neck, arms resting at her sides or one hand on her hip. Keep the proportions honest by measuring the dress against an imaginary figure first, the head should sit at roughly one-eighth the height of the whole figure, so a tall dress needs a slightly longer neck and legs to match.

Beginners often draw the head too large for the cut fabric below it, which throws the whole figure off balance. Sketch the head lightly in pencil first and check it against the dress width before inking.

Add simple facial features and a hairstyle last, once the proportions feel settled.

You Will Need

• old magazine or catalog page with printed fabric pattern

Palette: Dusty Rose, Ivory, Warm Black, Ochre

Choose a piece of an old map, a torn corner works fine, and glue it slightly off-center on the page rather than dead middle, which keeps the layout from feeling stiff. Old atlases, road maps or even a printed map page from a magazine all work here.

Once it is down, draw small travel icons scattered around and sometimes overlapping the map edge: a tiny airplane, a camera, a suitcase, a compass rose. Work from the biggest icon first so the smaller ones can tuck around it without crowding.

The eye level matters more than you would think even in a flat collage like this: keep every icon drawn from the same front-on angle, rather than mixing a side-view suitcase with a top-down compass, so the little scene feels consistent.

No map scrap on hand, a torn page from an old phone book or ledger reads just as well under the travel icons.

You Will Need

• torn map scrap or page from an old atlas

Palette: Faded Sepia, Olive, Warm Black, Rust

Build a quiet night page by tearing two or three pieces of dark blue, navy and deep purple paper and layering them across the top two-thirds of the page, torn edges overlapping like soft clouds. Leave one lighter gap near the center for the moon.

Cut a small circle from cream or pale yellow paper, a coin makes a good template, and glue it into that gap. Then pick up a white gel pen or pale marker and draw simple craters and a few radiating light lines around the moon’s edge, right where cut paper meets the torn sky.

This is a good page to try dry brush texture: load a nearly dry brush with white paint and drag it lightly across the torn paper edges for a soft glow, much softer than a drawn line alone. If the white looks too chalky, lift some off immediately with a dry cloth before it sets.

Finish with a scatter of tiny dot stars across the dark paper.

You Will Need

• white gel pen
• small circular object to trace for the moon

Palette: Indigo, Deep Purple, Pale Yellow, Titanium White

Gather a handful of old postage stamps, used envelopes work fine if you do not have loose stamps, and arrange them in a loose grid or scattered cluster on the page. Glue them down with slightly uneven spacing, which looks far more natural than a tidy row.

Once they are set, draw a few envelope flaps, postmark circles and short handwritten-style letters weaving between the stamps, as if they are part of an old letter. A fine black pen keeps these marks crisp against the busy printed stamps.

Vary the stamp sizes and colors you choose rather than picking four that all match, since contrast is what makes a stamp collage interesting instead of just repetitive. Mix a bright one with two faded sepia ones and one with a bold central image.

If real stamps are hard to find, cut small rectangles from patterned paper and draw perforated edges around them with tiny dashes, which reads as a stamp just as well.

You Will Need

• old postage stamps or used envelopes

Palette: Faded Sepia, Postal Red, Warm Black, Cream

Collect any small printed scraps that look like travel: a bus ticket, a torn museum stub, a coffee sleeve, even a strip cut from a receipt. Layer three or four of these at slightly different angles down the page, overlapping corners so they feel like they fell out of a pocket together.

Draw simple city shapes connecting them: a row of narrow buildings along the bottom edge, a lamppost beside one ticket, a few birds in the sky above. Keep the drawn skyline lower in value and simpler in detail than the printed scraps, so the collage pieces stay the star of the page.

This page works well as a fast ten-minute version with just two tickets and one drawn rooftop line, or you can stretch it to forty minutes by adding a drawn map route connecting each scrap with a dotted line, plus small labels like street names.

Save train or plane tickets specifically for this kind of page rather than tossing them.

Palette: Faded Sepia, Slate Grey, Warm Black, Mustard

Old seed packets have lovely illustrations printed right on them, so cut out two or three of the printed flower images, cutting close to the petal edges rather than leaving a square background. Glue them in a loose row or cluster near the bottom of the page.

Draw stems and leaves connecting the cut flowers down to a single ground line, so they read as one bouquet rather than three separate pictures. A fine pen works best for the stems, and a slightly thicker marker line for the leaf edges adds a nice contrast in weight.

If you do not have old seed packets, cut flower images from gardening catalogs or magazines work exactly the same way, since the idea only needs a printed flower image with a plain enough background to cut around.

Once this page works, try it again next time with the flowers cut smaller and arranged inside a drawn jar or basket outline instead of loose on the ground line.

You Will Need

• old seed packets or gardening catalog pages

Palette: Leaf Green, Poppy Red, Mustard, Warm Black

Keep a small envelope in your sketchbook for saving seed packet cutouts and other scraps as you come across them, so you always have material ready.

Cut four or six small squares from patterned fabric scraps or patterned paper if fabric is harder to glue flat, and arrange them in a simple quilt grid across the page. Glue each square down fully at the edges so nothing lifts later.

Once the grid is set, draw a line of small dashes along every seam between squares, mimicking hand stitching. Keep the dash spacing even and the pen pressure light, since real stitching reads as a rhythm rather than heavy marks.

Getting the grid straight is the trickiest part: lightly pencil four horizontal and vertical guide lines before gluing any fabric down, so each square lines up with its neighbors instead of drifting off at an angle.

Fabric glue holds best on cloth scraps, but a thin layer of craft glue works fine too as long as you let each square dry flat under a heavy book before moving on.

You Will Need

• small fabric scraps or patterned paper squares
• fabric glue (if using real fabric)

Palette: Dusty Rose, Sage Green, Cream, Warm Black

Save a real coffee shop receipt, or print a plain strip of paper with a few handwritten lines on it to stand in for one, and glue it vertically down one side of the page. The long thin shape leaves a generous column of space beside it for drawing.

Fill that space with small coffee doodles: a cup with steam lines, a coffee bean, a pastry, a tiny spoon. Draw these at a slightly looser, sketchier pressure than the stitched quilt or the careful travel icons elsewhere in your sketchbook, since a cafe page should feel quick and relaxed.

The steam lines above the cup are where most hands tense up and draw too straight. Loosen your wrist and let each line wobble slightly as it rises, curving gently left then right, which reads far more like real steam than a stiff vertical mark.

No receipt handy, a torn strip from a brown paper bag glued down and lightly inked with a fake total works just as well.

Palette: Coffee Brown, Cream, Warm Black, Terracotta

Tear a page from an old paperback, one with text rather than a picture, and glue it across most of the page as the background. Let one torn edge stay rough and visible rather than trimming it neat.

Once dry, draw a simple sitting cat directly over the printed text in fineliner: a rounded body, triangle ears, a curled tail wrapped around the paws. Leave the cat’s outline unfilled, or fill it loosely with a single marker color, so the printed words still show through faintly inside the shape.

A nice reader looking for more feline practice before this page can warm up first with the ideas in these cat doodles, which cover the same simple shapes at a smaller scale.

If the printed text is hard to draw over neatly, go over your pencil sketch in pen first, then erase stray pencil lines once the ink is fully dry.

You Will Need

• old paperback page with printed text

Palette: Faded Sepia, Warm Black, Soft Grey, Cream

Cut three or four narrow rectangles from different patterned papers, each one a different height, and glue them side by side along the bottom of the page to form a row of house fronts. Vary the widths too, so the row does not look like a repeated stamp.

Draw a simple roofline, a door and one or two windows on each house in fineliner, keeping the window size consistent across all the houses even though the papers differ. That one repeated measurement is what makes a mismatched row of patterns read as a single street.

Add a horizon line connecting the house bottoms and a few birds or a lamppost in the gaps between buildings to tie the row together.

If your patterned paper stock is limited, cut the same sheet into pieces and rotate or flip each piece before gluing, which gives enough visual variety for a convincing street.

You Will Need

• assorted patterned paper scraps

Palette: Terracotta, Sage Green, Mustard, Warm Black

Lay down several short strips of washi tape in a cluster near the bottom of the page, choosing strips with floral or striped patterns if you have them, to act as flower beds and plant stems. Overlap a few strips at different angles for a fuller bed.

Draw flower heads, leaves and small buds growing out from the top edge of each tape strip, turning the plain tape into the base of a plant rather than a decoration sitting on its own. A few curling tendril lines between the strips fill any gaps nicely.

Working light to dark helps here: draw the lightest, most distant flowers first toward the back of the bed, then layer slightly bolder, larger flowers in front, which gives the flat tape strips a sense of depth they would not have alone.

No washi tape in the drawer, thin strips of patterned paper glued down at the same angles work exactly the same way.

You Will Need

• washi tape with floral or striped patterns

Palette: Leaf Green, Dusty Rose, Mustard, Warm Black

Cut a simple paper doll figure from plain cream or kraft paper, a basic standing shape with no clothing details, and glue it centered on the page. Keep the figure plain so the drawn outfit has somewhere clear to sit.

Draw a dress, shoes and hair directly onto the doll in fineliner, then add a thin colored marker layer inside the clothing lines for a soft wash of color. Working the drawing in this order, outline first, color after, keeps the ink lines crisp instead of smudged under wet marker.

If you enjoy dressing a figure like this, the step by step figures in this girl drawing guide cover proportion and posture in more depth for your next page.

For a quick variation, cut a second plain doll shape and give it entirely different drawn clothes, so the two stand side by side like a small paper family.

You Will Need

• plain paper for the doll shape

Palette: Dusty Rose, Cream, Warm Black, Ochre

Print or cut a strip of three or four small photos, old snapshots work beautifully here, and glue the strip vertically down the page as if it came from a photo booth. Leave generous white space on either side for drawing.

Draw small doodles branching out from the photo strip edges: little hearts, stars, a frame corner, a ribbon tied at the top. Keep every doodle small and simple since the photos should stay the visual focus, not compete with busy drawings.

If you do not have printed photos, cut small portrait shapes from a magazine and arrange them in a vertical strip instead, which reads the same way once trimmed to even widths.

This page also works nicely as a frame for a drawn face rather than a photo: try it with the techniques from this step by step drawing guide for a hand-drawn version of the strip.

You Will Need

• small printed photos or cut magazine portraits

Palette: Faded Sepia, Warm Black, Dusty Rose, Cream

Cut simple fruit shapes from colored paper, an apple, a pear, a bunch of grapes made from several small circles, and arrange them overlapping in a cluster at the center of the page. Glue the back pieces down first, then layer the front fruit over them.

Draw a simple bowl shape beneath the cluster in fineliner, a wide curve with a thin rim line, and add a few short stem and highlight marks onto the cut fruit shapes to give them form. The stems in particular sell the illusion, so keep them thin and slightly curved rather than straight sticks.

If you would rather paint fruit directly instead of cutting it from paper, the techniques in this watercolor fruit tutorial cover shading and highlights that translate well onto the drawn details here too.

Vary the fruit selection next time with a single large cut melon slice as the centerpiece instead of a cluster, for a simpler composition.

You Will Need

• colored paper scraps for fruit shapes

Palette: Poppy Red, Leaf Green, Mustard, Warm Black

Tear a page from an old sheet music booklet, or print a plain page of musical staff lines if the real thing is hard to find, and glue it across the page as the background, letting the printed lines run horizontally.

Draw two or three small birds perched directly on the staff lines, as though the lines were telephone wires, with one bird mid-flight above the others. Keep the bird shapes simple: a rounded body, a small pointed beak, two curved wing lines.

Placing the birds at different heights along the staff rather than in a straight row gives the page a more natural, candid feel, much like real birds resting unevenly along a wire.

No sheet music on hand, lightly draw five straight pencil lines across any scrap paper to mimic a staff before adding the birds.

You Will Need

• old sheet music page or printed staff lines

Palette: Faded Sepia, Warm Black, Slate Grey, Cream

Cut a postcard-sized rectangle from a travel magazine image, or use a real old postcard if you have one, and glue it at a slight tilt near the top of the page. A gentle angle, five or ten degrees, keeps the page from looking too formal.

Draw a thin border and a stamp corner around the postcard image, along with a few short handwritten-style lines beside it as if addressing the card. Keep the drawn lettering loose and wavy rather than perfectly straight, since handwriting on a real postcard never runs dead level.

The common mistake is making the drawn border too thick, which fights with the delicate printed image inside it. A single fine pen line, no more than a millimeter from the postcard edge, reads far more convincingly.

Finish with one small drawn postmark circle overlapping the corner of the stamp space.

You Will Need

• travel magazine image or old postcard

Palette: Faded Sepia, Postal Red, Warm Black, Cream

Cut or copy an old handwritten recipe card, the more worn and stained looking the better, and glue it centered on the page with a little breathing room around the edges. A slightly yellowed photocopy works just as well as an original.

Draw small food doodles framing the card: a whisk, a mixing bowl, a sprig of herbs, a measuring spoon. Keep these doodles light and outline-only so the recipe text underneath stays easy to read without competing with heavy drawn shapes.

For more food doodle ideas to pull from for this border, these food doodles cover a good range of kitchen objects at the same simple level.

If you want to add color, keep it to one accent, a single warm yellow or red marker touch on just one or two doodles, rather than coloring every object around the card.

You Will Need

• old or photocopied handwritten recipe card

Palette: Faded Sepia, Terracotta, Warm Black, Mustard

Choose a scrap of patterned wrapping paper with stars, dots or a soft print, and tear it into a wide irregular shape to fill the top half of the page as a stylized sky. Torn edges blend into the page better here than a scissor-cut straight line.

Draw a simple landscape silhouette along the bottom edge where the sky meets the page: a row of hills, a few trees, a rooftop or two, all in solid black fineliner so they read as flat shapes against the busier printed sky above.

Keeping the silhouette completely flat and dark is the trick that makes a patterned paper sky work: any shading or detail inside the silhouette competes with the paper pattern, so leave it solid black and let the paper do the visual work.

Birthday or holiday wrapping paper scraps both work nicely for this, so save offcuts rather than discarding them after wrapping a gift.

You Will Need

• patterned wrapping paper scrap

Palette: Dusty Rose, Warm Black, Mustard, Cream

Cut or buy a small paper doily and trim it into a rough oval or circle frame shape, then glue it onto the page leaving the center open. Paper lace like this gives an instantly decorative border without any drawing at all.

Inside the open center, draw a simple portrait, a face shown mostly from the front with a plain hairstyle and minimal shading. Measuring the face in half before adding features keeps the proportions steady: the eyes sit roughly at the halfway point between the top of the head and the chin, a detail easy to misjudge when working inside a small cut frame.

If the portrait feels daunting, a loosely drawn profile, just a nose, lips and a simple hairline, works beautifully inside this kind of frame and takes far less time than a full front-facing face.

No paper doily on hand, cut a scalloped edge circle from plain paper with small curved scissor snips around the rim instead.

You Will Need

• paper doily or scalloped-edge cut paper

Palette: Dusty Rose, Cream, Warm Black, Soft Grey

Place a real leaf vein-side up under a page of thin paper and rub a crayon sideways across it until the leaf’s texture appears, then cut the rubbing out roughly around the leaf shape. Make three or four of these in different leaf shapes before gluing them in a loose cluster.

Once arranged, draw thin connecting stems and a few extra small leaves directly in fineliner between the rubbings, tying the cluster into one branch. Vary the pressure on these drawn stems, lighter near the leaf tips, slightly heavier near the base, for a more natural taper.

If crayon rubbings smudge too much, try the side of an unwrapped soft pencil instead, which gives a softer, more controlled texture that is easier to cut cleanly around once finished.

This idea pairs well with a wider nature sketchbook habit, and the sketchbook doodles collection has more small nature subjects worth collaging into future pages.

You Will Need

• real leaves
• wax crayon or soft pencil for rubbing

Palette: Leaf Green, Olive, Terracotta, Warm Black

Cut a row of simple tulip shapes from two or three different colored papers, a rounded cup shape on a straight stem, and glue them along the bottom third of the page in a loose row, overlapping some stems for a fuller field.

Draw a horizon line behind the tulips and a soft row of distant hills or a simple sun in fineliner, keeping these background elements smaller and lighter than the bold cut tulips in front so depth reads clearly.

For a ten-minute version, cut five tulips and skip the background entirely. For the forty-minute version, add a second, smaller row of cut tulips further up the page to suggest a field stretching into the distance, each one slightly smaller than the row in front.

Mixing two tulip colors in the same row, rather than making them all identical, keeps the field from feeling too uniform.

You Will Need

• colored paper for tulip shapes

Palette: Poppy Red, Mustard, Leaf Green, Warm Black

Cut a window frame shape from a piece of folded paper, a simple rectangle with a cross-shaped cut out of the center for the panes, and glue it onto the page so the open panes reveal the paper beneath. This frame becomes the border for a tiny drawn scene.

Inside the open window panes, draw a small view: distant rooftops, a tree, a bit of sky, whatever scene suits the sketchbook’s page. Keep this interior drawing simple since the window frame itself already carries plenty of visual weight.

Drawing the scene as though viewed slightly from below, with rooftops angled gently upward toward the horizon, gives the window a sense of looking outward from inside a room rather than a flat picture stuck behind glass.

If cutting a clean cross shape feels fiddly, a plain rectangular opening works just as well and is far easier to cut accurately.

Palette: Terracotta, Soft Grey, Warm Black, Cream

Fold a small paper boat shape, the classic origami style works nicely here, from a scrap of real newspaper, or simply cut a boat silhouette from a newsprint page if folding feels like too much. Glue it onto the lower half of the page.

Draw curving wave lines in fineliner radiating out from the boat’s hull, getting wider and more spaced apart toward the edges of the page. This spacing trick mimics how ripples actually spread and stops the waves from looking like a flat repeated pattern.

Where the drawn waves meet the printed newspaper hull is where most pages start to look messy. Keep the wave lines stopping just short of the boat’s edge rather than running directly onto the newsprint, which keeps the two materials visually separate and clean.

No newspaper on hand, any printed text scrap, an old envelope or junk mail, folds or cuts the same way.

You Will Need

• newspaper scrap

Palette: Faded Sepia, Prussian Blue, Warm Black, Cream

Cut a simple heart shape from a scrap of patterned fabric, or patterned paper if fabric is tricky to glue, and center it on the page. Keep the heart fairly large, filling a good third of the page, since the drawn details that follow need room to sit around its edge.

Draw a line of small cross-stitch style marks, simple X shapes, around the entire border of the heart in fineliner, evenly spaced like hand embroidery. A light pencil dot every half inch around the edge first keeps the spacing even before you commit to ink.

Add one or two tiny drawn flowers or a short banner with the X-stitch style continuing into them, so the embroidery detail feels connected rather than only decorating the outer edge.

If fabric glue is not on hand, a thin layer of craft glue works, just press the fabric flat under a book while it dries to avoid curling edges.

You Will Need

• fabric scrap or patterned paper
• fabric glue (if using real fabric)

Palette: Dusty Rose, Cream, Warm Black, Sage Green

Cut three or four triangular mountain shapes from different shades of paper, dark grey, muted blue, soft brown, and layer them from darkest at the back to lightest at the front, overlapping the bottom edges so they sit staggered across the page.

Draw a few simple details once they are glued: snowy caps as jagged white lines along the darkest back peaks, a scattering of small pine trees along the lightest front peak. Keeping detail only on the front layer and leaving the back layers completely plain is what sells the sense of distance.

Working this way, back to front in value from dark to light, is the same trick landscape painters use for atmospheric perspective, and it works just as well with flat cut paper shapes as it does with paint.

No colored paper in those shades, plain paper tinted lightly with watered-down ink or coffee before cutting gives a similar graded effect.

You Will Need

• paper in three or four tonal shades

Palette: Slate Grey, Prussian Blue, Soft Grey, Warm Black

Cut eight small circles of the same size from dark paper, a bottle cap or coin makes a good consistent template, and arrange them in a gentle arc across the page. Keep every circle exactly the same size since the matching scale is what makes the phase sequence read correctly.

Draw a white or pale marker crescent shape onto each circle, shifting the lit edge gradually from a thin sliver on the first circle to a full circle and back to a sliver on the last, following the real order of a lunar cycle.

The easiest way to keep this consistent is to work left to right in one pass, drawing just the crescent shape on every circle before adding any crater details, rather than finishing one moon completely before starting the next.

No white marker, a white gel pen or even white colored pencil over dark paper gives a similar soft glow.

You Will Need

• small circular template (bottle cap or coin)
• white gel pen or white marker

Palette: Warm Black, Titanium White, Indigo, Soft Grey

Cut a simple armchair silhouette from patterned paper, something with a cozy print like florals or stripes, and glue it centered on the page. The pattern instantly reads as upholstery fabric without any extra drawing needed.

Draw a curled sleeping cat shape sitting on the chair seat in fineliner, a loose oval body with the tail wrapped around and ears just visible above the curve of the back. Keep the cat’s outline simple and let a bit of the patterned chair show through faintly if you leave the body unfilled, or fill it solid for more contrast.

For more sleeping cat poses to borrow for this spot on the chair, these cat doodles cover a few curled and stretched positions at this same simple level.

A small drawn cushion tucked beside the cat finishes the scene without much extra effort.

You Will Need

• patterned paper for the chair

Palette: Dusty Rose, Warm Black, Mustard, Cream

Cut two matching postage stamps, or two cut rectangles from patterned paper, into soft wing shapes and glue them in a mirrored pair on the page, meeting at a narrow gap in the center. This gap is where the butterfly’s body will sit.

Draw the butterfly’s body directly in that center gap in fineliner, a simple oval thorax with two thin curling antennae, then extend a few vein lines out from the body onto each cut wing to tie the stamps and the drawn body into one creature.

Getting the wings to actually look symmetrical is the main challenge: cut both wing shapes from the same stamp design if you can find two matching ones, or fold a single stamp in half and cut through both layers at once for a perfect mirror pair.

For more butterfly wing shapes and markings to reference while drawing the vein details, this butterfly drawing guide is a useful companion.

You Will Need

• two matching postage stamps or patterned paper scraps

Palette: Faded Sepia, Postal Red, Warm Black, Mustard

Cut several small flower images from an old seed catalog or gardening magazine, keeping them all roughly the same small size, and glue them in a continuous line along one edge of the page, top, bottom, or down one side, to form a decorative border.

Draw a thin connecting vine or ribbon line threading through all the cut flowers in fineliner, with small leaves branching off it between each bloom. This single connecting line is what turns a row of separate cutouts into one cohesive border rather than a scattered strip.

Leave the center of the page open once the border is finished, since this idea works especially well framing a journal entry or a small drawn scene added later, rather than filling the whole page with collage.

Catalog cutouts not available, small flower stickers or stamps lined up the same way create the same border effect.

You Will Need

• seed catalog or gardening magazine

Palette: Leaf Green, Dusty Rose, Mustard, Warm Black

Cut six or seven thin curved strips of colored paper, one for each rainbow color, each slightly shorter than the last so they nest inside one another like an arc. Glue them starting with the longest red strip at the back and working forward to the shortest violet strip in front.

Once the arc is glued, draw a few small clouds at each end of the rainbow in fineliner, simple bumpy outlines, and a scatter of raindrops falling from one side to ground the rainbow in a small weather scene rather than floating alone.

Getting the curve consistent across seven separate strips is the fiddly part: cut one strip first, trace around it onto the next sheet with a slightly shorter length, and repeat down the line so every arc shares the same curve.

If precise paper strips feel like too much cutting, three or four wider bands create a simpler, bolder rainbow with the same effect.

You Will Need

• colored paper in rainbow shades

Palette: Poppy Red, Mustard, Leaf Green, Prussian Blue

Finish the sketchbook with a botanical print collage, cutting one or two detailed flower or leaf images from an old botanical illustration book, calendar page, or printed scrap, and gluing them as the central focus of the page. Leave generous white space around the image.

Draw two or three small bees in fineliner hovering near the flower’s center, simple oval bodies with thin curved stripe lines and small transparent wing shapes sketched with light, quick strokes. Keep the wings barely-there, just a faint outline, so they read as a blur of motion rather than solid shapes.

Place one bee closer to the flower and one further away at a slightly different angle, which gives the small scene a sense of movement around the still printed botanical image rather than everything facing the same direction.

No botanical print on hand, a simple pressed flower or a hand-drawn blossom works as the centerpiece just as well, with the same bees added around it.

You Will Need

• botanical print image or illustration page

Palette: Mustard, Warm Black, Leaf Green, Dusty Rose

What to Do Next

Pick one idea that matches scraps you already have on hand, the book page cat or the ticket collage are both forgiving places to start, and keep a mixed media sketchbook page open beside your glue stick and fineliner. Finish that one page today, then let the leftover scraps point you toward tomorrow’s.

Frequently Asked Questions

What paper works best for collage drawing in a sketchbook?

A mixed media sketchbook with thicker pages works best, since it handles glue without buckling. Pages around 150gsm or heavier give enough body to layer paper scraps and ink without the page warping as it dries.

What glue should you use for collage drawing pages?

A standard acid-free glue stick works for most paper scraps and dries flat without wrinkling the page. For fabric pieces, a thin layer of craft glue or fabric glue holds better, especially pressed flat under a book while it dries.

Should you glue the paper down before or after drawing?

Glue the paper scraps down first, then draw on top once everything is fully dry. Drawing first and gluing around it is much harder to plan, and wet glue under fresh ink can smear the lines.

What pens work best over collage paper and photos?

A fine point permanent fineliner, around 0.3 to 0.5mm, works well over most glued paper and printed images without bleeding. Test it first on a similar scrap, since some glossy magazine paper resists ink more than matte paper.

Where do you find good scraps for collage drawing?

Old magazines, maps, receipts, seed packets and book pages are the easiest sources, plus any mail or packaging you would normally toss. Keep a small envelope or box specifically for saving interesting scraps as you come across them.