“Creating Art at the Speed of Life” Lessons 1 to 6

Love doing the lessons in Pam Carrikers book “Creating Art at the Speed of Life”.

Here are my pages so far:

Lesson #1 Color Wheeling and Lesson #2 Colorful Language

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Lesson #3 Analogous Analogy

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Lesson #4 One Color at a Time – it had to be blue for this lesson; always a good choice when several mediums need to come together. The elephant – sheep – bird pile image kept haunting me and it HAD to be included into the layout!

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Lesson #5 It’s Complementary ~ here I really liked the background and didn’t want the Critique sheet to cover up the right hand side, so I have taped the side of the sheet, so it can be opened to reveal the full layout.

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Lesson #6 Under Wraps – love the subtle colours of the water colours here. I had Distress INks that matched perfectly, so used those with the sequence scrap to add interest. I was dubious with the black lines and then shading them, but if came out wonderfully! With real depth, making it look like the black lines are standing out from the background. Very clever technique!

Paint shading and faces practice

After watching Dina Wakley painting her tag, I was enthralled with her shading and highlighting with white and dark blue paints. I wanted to give it a try. I’m also developing my face drawings so I put them together to see what I could create.

I always worry, when painting faces that the colours aren’t true to life – getting “skin” colour “right” is almost impossible. So I took a HUGE step away from trying to get the skin colour “right” and use non-kin colour colours. Here are the results:

Isn’t it disconcerting to see green people?

The painting was done with Folk Art paints, straight onto water colour paper. It was a little hard to blend the shading and highlighting colour as the paint was drying quickly. Next time I may add a layer of Gesso first or use my (tiny) collection of Golden paints.

Thanks for stopping by! Happy creating!

 

More Gelli Printing Fun

Hello Crafty Ones,

I have been having lots of fun creating Gelli plate print samples for the upcoming Picture to Page Papercrafts Show – Mixed Media Art has taken the plunge into retail and we are having a Pop-up Store at the show, in Melbourne Australia 17 & 18 May 2014. We are focussing on a range of products that have multiple uses, including Gelli Plates and everything you need to get started – brayers, paints, stencils and texture kits! So much FUN all in one place!

We will also have the Wendy Vecchi Stamp It – Stencil It range of flowers – all six! Plus all of Wendy’s new inks and mini blenders to make it easy to throw a tag or card together with a few basic techniques.

You may also spy some of the Dina Wakley stamps plus the Gelato sets – so much crafty fun, all in one stop!!

Happy creating,

Michelle

June Tip-In page – White

The theme for this months Tip in page is “White” (for the Paper Traders, year long tip in swap / challenge). WHAT a challenging theme!

I’m not the bravest when it comes to choosing colours but a complete lack of colour was hard. So I went with visual texture, adding paper ephemera and impasto medium (see the square and the negative square – pretty funky, heh!) then I added paints in whites and off whites, added the pink (meant to make it lighter but it was darker than I had planned). Finished off with varnish. Added some stitching and lettering with Rub-ons and paint marker.

 

MIA but back again!

Wow! It’s been 12 months since the last Crusade and 12 months since I’ve hung up any art here, what-so-ever! I have been busy making art – honest- but have been spending my energy over at Mixed Media Art. It is a time consuming passion but I want to share the brilliant art / craft that is mixed media, that I have been going crazy writing and publishing a book, making videos and all sorts of stuff. Here’s a bit of an overview!

Creating Layers in Mixed Media Art

This book has brought together many techniques and two completely new pieces of artwork to share the joy of getting richness and depth into your artwork.

Available on Amazon

MMA Tips Videos

I have created a series of (short) videos, covering different aspects of mixed media techniques or materials.

 

Art Journals

My favourite art making at the moment is creating simple art journal, using large sheets of water colour paper. Then whenever I am painting something else and have any paint left over, or before I clean my brushes, I add a coloured wash.

Interesting background

Mixed Media Art Journal

 

 

Well, there’s the highlights for the last few months. I will be back soon!

Happy creating!

Mixed Media Art Ephemera Kits

The Mixed Media Arts team are excited to announce they have ephemera kits for sale on Etsy! Each kit contains a heap of items, including 7 different text sheets, fibres and an array of embellishments – all perfect for creating a huge array of mixed media art or adding to your mixed-media collection.

Collections at Paperific

It was the end of August and time to head to the Melbourne Showgrounds for Paperific – celebrating their 10th birthday this year!  The main reason I head out to the showgrounds each year is to see Julie Van Oosten and her Collections; to see what new offerings she has created. Jenny Crossley was also on-hand to help out!

And this year we were not disappointed – Julie has some very cute kits, with angel wings and butterflies. There was also a new range of papers that included some sky blue and turquoise green.

Julie is always so happy to share her techniques with everyone that visits and generously allows people to take photos, to jog the memory once they return home with their goodies. There were people who had come from New Zealand, rural Victoria and even Perth (Her home town), as well as across Melbourne, just to see the Collections collection.

I also had the chance to help Julie and Jenny out on the stand;

Taken in a hurry, this self portrait shows a grin of pure delight. Thanks Julie and Jenny! Now it’s time to go and cut and stick something…

Image Transfers

Incorporating image transfers into your mixed media art is a brilliant way to blend images with the background, creating wonderful effects – some expected and some not expected!

Cyndi has written an article for us, all about Getting Started with Image Transfers, and has offered us 7 different methods to try.

Happy Creating,
Michelle and the Mixed Media Art team

The book that Jenny (Crossley) made…

Beachhouse Boulevard hosted their annual retreat / stamp camp / scrapbooking weekend in early June 2010.  This year’s guest artist was Jenny Crossley, of A Mark in Time fame, known for her industrial jewellery and wonderful art book making.

Jenny Crossley (left) & Michelle

Our project for the weekend was a beautiful art book, filled with vintage images, found objects and antiqued papers, bound in four signatures with ribbon or string.  There was a frenzy of antiquing, gluing, sanding and edging; and that was just to prepare the pages. Then the decorating began.  After many hours work, we had all finished our books.

As usual, the pictures do not do this work of art justice. It is so much better when you can pick it up and touch it and see how the light reflects off the mica and embellishments.

Many thanks must go to Monika and Mick, who host a fantastic retreat, each year. And also to Jenny for sharing her brilliant artwork and for her enthusiasm.

Also a huge thank you to all of the class participants: this book was such a lot of work and everyone helped one another out at different stages, regardless of experience level. And the encouragement between everyone was heartwarming.

Mixed Media Art’s New Mailing List

Mixed Media Art has now got a mailing list!

Mixed Media Canvas

Come and join in the fun! Click HERE on this link…