Mixed Media Artist ~ Linda Giese

Our Mixed Media Art community is a diverse bunch; from all around the world, with different interests, reasons why we create and a wide range of skills. Over the next few weeks we will be featuring a range of mixed media artists to tell their stories and share their artwork.

Linda Giese is our featured artist this week and we’ll let her tell us about herself…

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I’m Linda Giese. I live in El Cajon, California, USA. I’m married with 2 kids and 3 terrific grandkids. My charmed life consists of tennis and Curves for my body, bridge for my mind and art for my soul. Of course family trumps all. I was published for the first time in Art Journaling magazine, Winter 2011 issue. I was beyond thrilled. I teach privately..art of course…and that is my passion. I want everyone to have as much fun as I do.

I’ve included some journal pages and one canvas of a violinist. I approach the canvas in much the same way as a journal page. I often include napkins and tissue adhered with mod podge. I often include foreign text. I am in the midst of 15 journals. Each seems to serve a different purpose. Small sketchbooks for travel and on the go sketches, big sketch books for bigger ideas, altered books for interesting ideas and page spreads that are more finished works of art like the canvas’, and small sketchbooks for small ideas. I have an altered book for techniques, and a big sketchbook for zentangles. I also have 3 notebooks including a junque journal.

I don’t have a blog, but love to answer any art questions. Here comes that teacher in me..hehehe.

Love and hugs,

Linda

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Violinist on Canvas

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Journal Layouts

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Thanks for sharing your layouts and gorgeous canvas with us, Linda.

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MMAT06 ~ Creating Stencils from Photos

By MMA_Team 2 Comments

Mixed Media Art Technique Sheet 6 is all about creating stencils from photos. Here are the details of how I created that art journal background which I then used with these stencils.

Mixed Media Journal Background

I started by tearing various text pages into squares (using a ruler) and sticking them onto an art journal spread using a glue stick.

Then I added light blue paint and put the paint directly onto the credit card.

I started at the top of the page and applied the paint onto the art journal using the card. When I was half way down the page, I lifted the card to create a fading effect.

Then I added brown across the bottom.

I continued with a few layers of light blue and then a few of straight white, starting from the brown section up, leading into the blue. The white also took away some of the darkness in the brown.

I added two darker shades of blue across the top. I was very careful to make sure I only added a little at a time.

To blend these in, I added more light blue and white.

And I was finally happy with the overall results. This method of applying paint with a credit card is great as the print dries really quickly so it is easy to add lots of layers in a short amount of time.

To finish off the piece, I created a stencil from a photo and sponged the trees on the background with grey paint.

To create the layers and depth of the trees, I added more black paint into the grey, adding more trees until I was out of room. I also used the mask part of the stencil.

Here is more of the detail. You can still see the underlying text paper and the darker blue.

This is the photo I had in my mind while creating this layout.

I hope this tutorial will inspire you!

Happy creating,

Michelle
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P.S. We love to hear from you so please add your comments below…
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Altered Book Art Journal by Wendy Whipple

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Wendy Whipple saw our shout-out for mixed media art journal photos, and was happy to pass along some pictures of her altered book/art journal.

“The theme of the journal is belly dance, and how I came to it,” Wendy says. “I found a book entitled Evening Class to use (my classes were at night) and then I discovered the first couple pages contained words that actually were relevant to MY story. Kismet!”

Here are the first 10 pages of Wendy’s gorgeous art journal;

Torn and cut mulberry paper, surrounding the book’s title, appropriate because my belly dance class was – in fact – an Evening Class.

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The edge. Each of those fringes attach to a tab. Each tab is a section of a journal I wrote for the 8 weeks of my first session.
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More mulberry paper (the back side of the title page) and the painted first page, highlighting words that were already there. The pocket tag has a picture of me as a baby, and a little journal note on the back.
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More highlighted existing words. Facing page has dance-related quotes, and a dancer I painted with acrylics on a paper towel (I don’t know why I did it, but it looks cool). I used chalk pastels to edge around the quotations to make then stand out.
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The big image is from a newspaper article about Dancing with the Stars if I recall correctly, but the swirling skirts and bare waist of the dancer reminded me of a belly dancer.
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Colored pencil, pen, and computer-generated clip art. Journalling in my own wretched handwriting.
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Facing page: computer generated journalling – much more attractive! and an embossed block of a paisley design using clear embossing powder. The other in-progress pages look very much like that purple page: a printed block of journal on a plain painted background. I have yet to enhance, embellish or junk them up further… although I am itching to do so.
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Wendy lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and daughter. She’s played with mixed media art for several years, but has only been “serious” about it since 2007, starting small with ATCs. In addition to paints and glues and shrink plastic, she enjoys photography, belly dancing, and online gaming. (For the Horde!). More of Wendy’s work can been seen at her blog The Creative Miscellany.