Currently Browsing: Mixed Media 41 articles
Mixed Media View of the Backyard: Expanding Your Visual Vocabulary
It’s always a great idea to take a moment and look out the window. Our neighbors at the back of our yard have a lush growth of ferns at this time of the year. I turned the page in my journal and sketched on this pre-painted background—the verso page background was in the same vein […]
Television: The Big Bang Theory
For various reasons I’ve been rewatching shows I watched when they first ran. These days with all the streaming possibilities it’s hard some days to remember what TV used to be like, with the three networks and seasons, and summer re-runs and everyone in the office watching the same top shows. Then of course we […]
Mixed Media Portrait Supplies
Sometimes you work in watercolor and you pick up some color pencils too. It’s fun, why not? Especially if you spent your childhood working with color pencils. I started this portrait of a fairgoer from Earth’s World using a black grape Prismacolor pencil. (It’s not black, it’s not overly strident. I enjoy it. I also […]
IFJM: Sometimes Projects Creep Up On You
OK, so the other day I posted about the importance of finishing projects. I included some documents I’d created to help people working through previous International Fake Journal Month public celebrations. You can see that post at this link. Of course as soon as the post was set to publish I went into the studio […]
Who Says I Don’t Paint Selfies?
Yep this is a selfie of me. I was showing the painting in a Zoom meeting with an art group and I realized it was me—after I realized we no longer had rule of law in the U.S. Oddly it’s one of the first color illustrations I’ve made in the first 3 months of the […]
Vintage Hair—Mixed Media and Palette Organization
Today it’s a photo step-by-step and not a video as I paint a mixed media portrait with a vintage hair style. Since I’m not teaching currently I sometimes turn the drawing table camera on for my own benefit to look at how I progressed through stages. But sometimes I simply take photos at various stopping […]
Studies Don’t Have to Be Accurate to Be Useful
I used to listen to my students go on and on about not wanting to make studies from the great art masters because they couldn’t come close to what those masters created. Well duh. We simply don’t have those skills. But we need to remember that studies, even quick, seemingly sloppy or non-accurate studies are […]
Another Reason to Sketch and Paint the Same Subject Multiple Times
Continuing my thoughts from Friday’s post I wanted to add another reason why it is a good idea to sketch and paint the same subject multiple times—the fun of trying different media out and seeing how the use of different media changes your interpretation. On this page spread I first sketched a a watercolor portrait […]
Short Projects for Holiday Schedules
Everyone knows I love projects. This is a video post, but first you need some context. Update 11.25.24: Please note this post got long and I didn’t cover different types of finishes to use if you’re working with watercolor. I will have suggestions in a blog post on Tuesday. If you’re framing these pieces under […]
Why Put All That Effort into an Background You Can’t See?
On Instagram earlier this week I posted this mixed media portrait and commented about the effort involved in creating the “beehive” hairstyle. I also commented about how I wouldn’t make that effort. Yet there are all sorts of things we put effort into daily. Sometimes hourly (I’m thinking of my PT heavy life right now). […]