Mixed Media Art

Technorati Tags: Mixed Media Art, mixed media collage, Mixed Media Painting, Mixed Media Techniques

The term “mixed media art” is a broad definition that covers many arts and crafts, including collage, assemblage (both 2D and 3D), altered objects, including books and boxes, handmade greeting cards, artist trading cards (ATCs) and tags, art journalling and book making.

Hanging Art

The “mixed media” used includes paints, papers and board of all descriptions, glues, buttons, fabrics, found objects, photos, metal bits, fibres, things from nature, inks, pencils, crayons, markers, pastels and polymer clays, to name a few.

What materials do I need to get started?
The beauty of mixed media art is the flexibility to start with things around you and expend from there. To get started you need a substrate or base. This could be a clean sheet of paper, sketchbook, a cereal box or anything else that may be sitting still.  Then, if you are heading down the collage path, you’ll need something to stick with (glue sticks are fine to begin with) and something to stick on (coloured papers, newspapers, catalogues, and anything else that grabs you).

If you are heading down the drawing / painting path, then once you have your substrate, you’ll need something to make a mark, whether its pencils, paints, crayons, markers or pastels.

Any or all of these are all you need to get started. Just use the things you have around you

What skills do I need to get started?
Another attractive feature of Mixed Media Art is that you don’t need fine art or drawing skills. That doesn’t mean you are excluded from mixed media art if you do have these skills, but it opens up a world of creativity for the rest of us who like to make things but “Can’t draw”.

The skills you need to get started are as simple as being able to use a pencil, scissors and glue. These skills will expand and develop with practice, depending on which “branch” you follow.  More complicated skills of mixing paints and developing your “artist eye” will happen as you expand your own creativity. Specific skills for particular media or art types will present themselves as you move into these areas. As with many things in life, the techniques and teachers will appear when you are ready.

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Technorati Tags: art journalling, Mixed Media Art, Mixed Media Art Journal, mixed media collage, Mixed Media Painting, What is mixed media art

This article is written by Francesca Albini 

One of the most annoying things is when your pens go dry and you have to throw them away. It really hurts me to get rid of any tool that can be used or should have been used for my art. So I don’t. I find ways to rescue almost everything.

Every time one of my ballpoint pens goes dry I take a pair of scissors and snip the plastic reservoir into a bin or plastic bag (they tend to fly across the room otherwise!), then put the segments in a small container. When I have enough segments (two or three reservoirs), I pour a little bit of surgical spirit into the container, close it really tight and shake well. The result is a purply blue ink. If it’s too light in colour, wait a day for some of the spirit to evaporate. I suggest you use a cheap brush with this ink, as it can be harsh on the bristles.

Here is a portrait of the singer Sippie Wallace I painted with homemade ballpoint ink. Because this ink is quite viscous, instead of diluting it with water or more spirit to obtain lighter shades I prefer to dry the brush on a tissue. Using an almost dry brush gives the painting an unusual and pleasant grainy feel. Ballpoint ink is not the easiest of mediums to use, but it is fun to experiment with.

Gel pens are particularly prone to get dry very quickly. Snip the dry reservoirs and put them in a container, as above, but this time dilute with water. I like the ink made with gel pens because it very often has a shiny, glittery texture. Here is a flamingo I painted using ink made out of a few pink and orange dry gel pens. Gel pen ink is also easier to use, as it can be further diluted with water.

I spent the Christmas holidays going for walks in various parks and gathered a few things that I could turn into art tools, like bamboo stems and a pigeon feather (hoping the ex owner didn’t have the flu!) There are many sites on the internet that show you how to make reeds and quills. It’s really quite simple. Cut the shape of the nib with a craft knife, test and trim until you are happy with the marks it makes. While my husband was trying to have a serious conversation with me, I doodled his portrait with my homemade bamboo reed and Indian ink. He ended up looking a bit like the Buddha, so I thought of adding some tropical foliage in the background with my pigeon quill.

Playing with homemade, found or recycled material is fun, creative, cheap, and makes you feel good.

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Francesca is a visual artist using pretty much everything she finds around her to record and relive feelings and memories of places and emotions. She collages, paints, draws, photographs. Francesca loves mixing modern technology, such as mobile phone apps, with the simplest of tools such as glitter glue, crayons and other children’s art supplies.

Read her blog at Fran’s Journal Blogspot

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Technorati Tags: flamingo, Francesca Albini, homemade inks, homemade pens, Sippie Wallace

The start of a New Year always seems like a good time to reflect in the year just past and set some goals for the year ahead. The art / crafting area of your life is no different; it is needed to balance your lift and needs as much attention as your health, job/career and family.

Which Supplies?
Now we have considered what crafts we want to focus on, it makes it easier to determine which supplies, material and tools we need to create these crafts. One of the (many) great things about mixed media art is that we can turn supplies for nearly every other craft into being useful for mixed media art. No longer doing cross stitch? Then we can use the cotton as fibres embellishments in our books and use the fabric for image transfers. Not going to sew anymore? We can still use the materials to add texture to our art journals or tear into strips as an embellishment or use to bind a book. And of course the sewing machine can be used to stitch paper and journals and book sections.

The sorting can begin now that we know where our focus will be. I realise this will be hard for some – feeling like we are abandoning projects that had captured our hearts at one stage. If you can’t bear to hand them onto someone who can complete them or repurpose the materials, pack these projects into a box and move them away from your crafting area (into your wardrobe or storage). When we repeat this exercise in 12 months time and you hadn’t even thought about those projects, then it will be time to pass them on or repurpose then.

Choose one area to start sorting; pick a box or drawers or pile. Pull everything out, sorting it into keep or give away / sell, depending on if it relates to the few crafts we have decided to continue. If it is junk or dried out and won’t work, throw it away. Now group the like things together and put them back. Just focus on one area or drawer. You may find other items that could be stored with these ones but that can be part of the second review.

The aim here is to move quickly through each area of your crafting area and remove the junk and items no longer needed. This will begin to create space. If we pull everything out it can easily become overwhelming, so stick to small areas and put things back. Even if we just do one or two areas each day, we will slowly progress through the entire room, finding all sorts of things we had forgotten about. Continue to put things back that you want to keep and remove things you don’t.

If you find some fantastic things you had forgotten about and inspiration hits, make notes in your art journal so you will remember them when it’s crafting time again – for now it’s decluttering time!

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Technorati Tags: crafting clutter, decluttering, New Years' Resolutions, sorting