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!

GPP No 55 ~ Disappearing Act – Scene II

I had so much fun yesterday with the GPP Crusade’s Disappearing Act challenge, that when I had a spare hour, I could have either written another article for MixedMediaArt.net OR done some more painting – the painting won out this Sunday morning!

After yesterday’s oranges and yellows, I felt more purple today.

First, a few quick backgrounds (and I DID remember to note the colours and combinations I used)

Then used the same stamps from yesterday

Adding in an art journal layout for good measure:

Some stamping neat, some stamping random…

Now I have a HEAP of backgrounds, so I was wondering, if anyone else has a heap, would you like to do a swap? I love seeing how different everyone’s backgrounds are and swapping would give us a chance to have a close-up look at others. If you are interested, send me an email at createmixedmediaart (at) gmail (dot) com and we’ll work something out!

Happy Crusading!

(now to get the paint off my hands before heading to a conference this afternoon – maybe no one will notice!)

GPP – Crusade No. 25 Gesso

I’m back for this month’s GPP Street Team Crusade! This month is all about Gesso and it’s fabulous properties for creating resistance paint backgrounds. I’ve used Gesso a little before and had discovered some of its properties by accident. This is a great chance to delve a further into the sticky white “paint” with deliberation, rather than through sheer fluke!

Firstly I found a nice clean spread that already had some Gesso on one page, where I’d wiped off the brush from another project (I just HATE wasting that last bit of paint on brushes). I have a paint brush dedicated to Gesso, so I added some more with a criss-cross pattern [right hand side]. On the other page I stamped some swirls (from Buzz and Bloom) with Gesso brushed on. This was left to dry completely.

First Layer with Gesso

Next some purple and red acrylic paints were applied randomly across the two pages. I was a bit impatient here (and painting on the floor as my art table is such a mess!) so the colours are a bit too blotchy. I then squirted the pages with some water and used paper towel to swish some off. This worked better when I left the water to sit for a while – it created the whitish spaces on the RHS. I also found that the paints blended better over the Gesso background.

After paint and water spray was applied

The left-hand side didn’t work as well – that didn’t have any undercoat, so the paint tended to adhere to the page and the stamped swirls, rather that create a true resist. Next time I’ll paint with acrylics first, then add the Gesso images.  The RHS came up really well. Here is a close up:

Close-up pic of resisted area

You can still see the criss-crossed Gesso underneath. I have found that the underlying brush strokes in the Gesso often show through, so you need to keep that in mind.

Yet again Michelle Ward has created another fantastic artistic challenge – looking forward to many more into the New Year.

Hope all of your Christmas crafting projects are progressing well (that’s where I’m off to next!)

Michelle