Why paint with mixed media? Mixed media makes it easy to explore and develop new ideas for our personal artistic journey. We are creatures of exploration who seek innovation, fresh ideas, approaches and perspectives. New products come from considering different ways to integrate accessible supplies.

Technology, building structures, transportation and medicine are all examples of areas in which we can easily see great innovations; the arts are no different. To be relevant, art needs to reflect what’s going on in the world. Historically, mixed media can be found in countless works of art. One can look back hundreds of years to see paint, stone, sea shells, gold leaf, glass, wood, charcoal, wax, graphite and more—mixed to create great works of art. Artists throughout time have used anything at hand to visually communicate what is important to them.

Mixing ideas to create something new is evident in all art forms. Look at pure mediums vs. mixing media. How about modern dance—a mix of many dance styles, rock music that incorporates a symphony? Think of the Beatles as innovators, architecture that embodies new and old, steampunk art, low-rider cars, high fashion, gender bending, performance art, installations. All are genres that have been mixed.

Now we have more variety of media at our disposal to communicate our thoughts visually. So let’s explore mediums, techniques and the personal artistic journey. All you need to get started is confidence to push fear aside and see what is possible.

Texture

Texture can be thought of in two ways: the actual physical, tactile quality of a surface or the illusion that we create when making marks on a surface. There are many ways to achieve the illusion of texture in your paintings.
A few to consider include:

• Splattering—rubbing alcohol, paint or water—on a wet or dry surface
• Agitating partially dry acrylics
• Adding gravel or sand to matte medium
• Adding salt (not recommended)
• Mixing light-bodied paint with heavy-bodied paint.
• Scraping the surface of the paper (either wet or dry) with a tool

Texture plays a wonderful supporting role in painting. Because the illusion of texture is defined by value or color, it is difficult for it to have a strong main role without the painting becoming very busy. For me, texture is an auxiliary way to add interest—like icing on the cake.
As percussion in music adds richness to the song but is not the main melody, texture adds a similar interest to the visual effect. The physicality of a rough or smooth surface will affect your brush strokes and the overall visual result, so, once again, know your intention.

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Exercise: Drips and Doodles

What You’ll Need:
• Brush – I used a ½-inch (13mm) nylon brush
• Colored pencil sticks
• Fluid acrylics: Teal, Cobalt Blue, Quinacridone Magenta, Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold
• Gesso, white
• Pencil
• Rubbing alcohol
• Support: paper, Arches 140-lb. (300gsm)
• Watercolor crayons
• Watercolor sticks



1. Cover dry paper with a layer of fluid colors and white gesso mixed to provide a variety of transparencies and viscosities.




2. While the paint is wet, try making marks with a watercolour crayon. Notice how the paint is pushed aside by the crayon and how much crayon pigment may be left behind. If you enjoy line as an element of design, here is an opportunity to use line in wet paint.




3. Try adding some more pigment to the surface with a watercolor stick. The width of the mark will be broad and will give you an opportunity to infuse pure pigment onto the surface. Using a brush, you may want to practice softening edges, mixing the pigment into the wet paint or eliminating unwanted marks.




4. Place more fluid acrylic and gesso mixtures on the surface to obscure and integrate the marks that you have made. Try a colored pencil stick and note the difference in the marks and in the amount of pigment that transfers to the surface compared to the water-soluble crayons and sticks. The watercolor crayons and sticks are much softer than the pencil sticks, and they tend to leave more pigment on the surface.




5. Continue to add your gesso and acrylic mixture in different viscosities and opacities. Don’t be afraid to splatter some rubbing alcohol or paint to add diversity to your marks. This process is so much fun!




6. Add more doodles with a pencil—this time to create a variety of lines. Again I layered various semi-opaque acrylics over some areas, being careful to allow some of the beautiful lines and colors to peek through subsequent layers. The surface is maturing, becoming more interesting with subtle variations to entice the viewer to look more closely.




7. The area where the paint has repelled has rubbing alcohol beneath it. This layer of acrylic paint is more transparent




8. These applications could be used for an interesting background, specific areas in a painting like a garden, material in a person’s clothing or as a great ground surface to paint on.


Still Life Demonstration

In this demonstration, you will use basic shapes to describe a still life subject, a floral. My intention was to paint a floral with some meaning, so I gathered items from around my house to help tell the story. I used silk material with beautiful colors and textures, and set the vase atop an antique paint box to reference the past.

Choose a prepared ground or create one (using the drips and doodles ideas above).

Apply several layers of paint and gels to the canvas, and allow yourself permission to play with the materials. Practice balancing colors, shapes, values, lines and textures. Developing a ground can help warm you up for the painting process, help you know your materials better, and develop a beautiful surface that will show through in places providing you with areas that are mature and satisfying.

What You’ll Need:
• Acrylic inks
• Brushes, assorted
• Crackle paste
• Fiber paste
• Fluid acrylics and heavy-bodied acrylics: Hansa Yellow, Pyrrole Red, Quinacridone Magenta, Phthalo Blue (Red Shade), Cerulean blue, Ultramarine Blue and Cobalt Blue, Titanium White
• Gesso, black and white
• Granular gel
• Mark-making tools
• Pencil crayon, black
• Pouring fluid
• Surface a prepared surface from your explorations
• Watercolor crayons



1. Have fun with your different mediums. Use crackle paste, granular gel, fiber paste, acrylic inks, watercolor crayons and mark-making tools.




2. Establish your strong shapes first to begin calming the chaos. Mix some red, yellow and blue into the black and add a bit of white. Begin to fill in some of the darker values.




3. Tone some white gesso with red, yellow and blue, and fill in some of the lightest areas to further establish basic shapes.




4. Brush on a blue strip in the background, using Cobalt, Ultramarine and Cerulean. Using Pyrrole Red, Quinacridone Magenta and Hansa Yellow, loosely paint some flower shapes. Look at your painting. Think about its most important part. Are there areas that pull your eye away from that? Reduce the intensity of such areas. This piece is busy because of too many colors, shapes and value shifts. To deal with this, unite these with a single color, a transparent.




5. Look closely at the greens: Are they on the blue or yellow side? Look also at the values: Are they light or dark? Mix your own colors to match your intentions. At this point, try to link similar colors and values together in the foliage.




6. With each adjustment, continue to evaluate the painting as a whole. Does it feel comfortable? How much of the underpainting do you want to leave? I intensified the reds in the flowers, pushed the blue stripe in the background back farther, added more eucalyptus leaves and continued painting black stripes. I also mixed some neutral putty-green colors for the shapes within the vase.




7. Be open to trying different things. Remember, it is just paint; it’s just a surface. To give the illusion of more depth, use a transparent Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) to glaze in the background over the stripes at the top and right side. Glaze over some of the foliage in the center of the painting. To define the vase more clearly, push back light areas on either side of the vase and darken the paint box that the vase sits on. I also painted some brighter yellows on the left stripe.




8. I like a bit of color supported by neutrals. Each time I paint with lots of color, I end up painting over it with neutrals. So it is with this yellow stripe. I wanted the flowers to be most important, so I reduced the intensity of the blue and reduced the value contrast in the stripes.


9. After further glazing over background areas and adding more neutrals, apply a pouring fluid over the entire surface. The pouring fluid dries clear with a high gloss and really emphasizes the color intensity. Pouring fluid is a bit like self-levelling fluid when brushed on thinly.
 

Finished Painting

Plethora of Patterns, (51cm × 41cm), mixed media on board
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