Principles of Composition in Mixed Media Art

Elegant mixed Media Art is always determined by good design and composition. According to Marilyn Harris Mills who is a published designer and artist, the following are some of the elements you can consider for your art work:

Confidence
Your work should speak confidently to the viewer. Know the reason behind choosing the subject matter that you use. Confidence will show in your final art piece and the viewer will be appreciative of your artistic art message.

Moods and Emotions
Design elements need to contribute to creating a mood or an emotion within the viewer. The elements all need to work together to evoke a certain mood or emotion the artist wishes to convey to the viewer.

Remembrance
Creating an art piece that will be remembered is hard to accomplish. Have a style that will be captured in each of your paintings so that your art will be remembered. Create in your own unique style…then both you and your artwork will be remembered.

Composition
This refers to the arrangement of all the elements of a design. You can arrange the pieces in a few different ways but first you must choose a focal point.

A successful art work will encompass all of these elements and principles of design. Don’t expect to get it right the first time but be different than other artists. You will have to go through the Trial and error phase.

Making Greeting Cards: Tips and Tricks

Greeting cards are so fun and quick to make as Melanie Statnick who is a published artist/writer will attest. She has a happy and whimsy style which she uses to create art daily from her private studio. As a result of having to send cards to each other with her mum and the fact that she loves to send gifts, happy mail, post cards and handmade cards, she wants to get in the habit of snail mail again. You too can do the same and this is how she says you can do it just the same way she does it:

· Hand fold 140lbs cold press watercolour paper into a card shape.

· Open to lay card flat and spray with your favourite then air dry or dry with heat gun.

· Cut the card stock paper to smaller size to centre in the front of the card and glue. Stamp all four sides of card stock. Stamp image of 2” art squares. Glue squares to cardstock.

· Stamp your greeting on top and bottom of watercolour card.

Using Pitt Pen Big Brush Markers colour in the stamped images. Add Stickles in your favourite colours and washi tape to the edge.

You have finished making your card and you can make many more to use them as gifts.


Happy creating!

Being Creative with your ATC Backgrounds

Besides being a mixed media artist as well as writing for mixed media art, Shari Welch also enjoys helping others discover their creativity. She has been in a number of art shows in her hometown of Denton where she also volunteers on the education committee, teaches workshops, art camps, and performs art demos. At some point, she needed to find a way to produce a series of artist’s trading cards with the same background colour scheme while being able to make each an original little piece of art in itself. On the other hand she loves Gelli plate because it is reusable and cleans up easily. As a result she tried to print out GelliArts gel printing plate and this is how she did it: -

Materials used

· Flower masks and stencils by Heidi Swapp

· DecoArt acrylic paints

· 8×10 printing plate

· Stencils by Prima

· Rubber brayer

· Stencils by Tim Holtz

· White card stock 8.5×11 (cut to 8×10 after printing)

· Yarn, texture tool, cut out decorative paper

With template in hand, you can create a colour scheme and print out sets of ATC background. However she says that from www.gelliarts.com you can get a better understanding of what the gel printing plate is, and what you can create using it. On the same site, you will get instructions, projects, and Youtube videos.

Making Handmade Halloween Decorations

Kim Kelley is borderline obsessive about her crafting and her art. She loves to learn and explore new techniques and hopes that any art she creates leads someone to find their inner creative artist. She is in love with Halloween projects and she wants to create something special for her BUNCO party. The idea she wants to use is that of decorating a skull. So what got her inspired? On what she had seen, real flowers had been used but she needed to use something that would last so she though using fake ones would do.

She picked up onStyrofoam skulls which she could use to stick the flowers in where she wanted. She ended up pulling all of the stems out once and starting over wanting a different look. She did not like the way the stems showed from the back, so she added a thick, almost cheesecloth material hanging from the flowers and draping down the back of the skull. She glued one of the glitter spiders to the skull and one to the top of the highest flower and took her glue gun and created strings of webbing all over.

She had an inspiring project and she advises that you free off from your comfort zone, start using your imagination and exploring an anything that goes through your mind set.

Get Discovered by Sharing our Creativity with others

“Creativity is not an antisocial act”. Let go of your ego and remember: there is no one-size-fits-all plan for everybody. Flow with whatever’s good for you”. This is according to Martice Smith who has established herself as a freelance Illustrator and graphic designer having receiving her Bachelor of Arts Degree. The following are some of the approaches she advices every artist to use to get their works exposed so others and who will get to know you and your creations: -

· Be true to yourself by doing that which interests you and that which you consider authentic to you.

· Be open about what you are working on by collaborating on a project with other artists, sharing sneak peeks and ideas of your works in progress and also highlighting various techniques.

· Take records and document what you are doing. You can photograph your work at different stages to give people the experience of how you shape your art work.

· Celebrate other people’s work by teaming up with other artists to spread the word about each other’s recent success. And finally push yourself to try new tools and experiment with unfamiliar techniques.

In summary Martice acknowledges that being open to share your process while allowing for the possibility of people to have an ongoing connection with you and your creativity makes you grow as an artist. Let people know what you have to give them.

Mixed Media Art Tags from Scrap Papers

Tamara Dinius who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and chocolate lab believes that mixed media allows for a broad range of styles and anyone can find success in this form of artistic expression. While to her Mixed Media is all about creativity, she know too well that Mixed Media Art Tags are created using scraps of papers, old art work, music sheets, and other items that add texture and depth to the tags. And how does she achieve all achieve all this?

· Add the assorted scraps to an old manila folder. Besides, any type of adhesive medium will work.

· Add the scraps to your manila folder in a haphazard manner and once dry, layer a glaze of paint over the top to tone down the first layer.

· Use a stencil and acrylic paint to create additional depth and interest to your tags. On this, use a paint color that is dominant in your scraps of paper.

· Using your favorite stamp and ink pad add additional interest by stamping your project. You can also add acrylic paint using stencils or other items.

· To finish, use additional fabric and papers to back the tags. Using a zigzag stitch, sew around the perimeter of the tag. Punch a hole and add your ribbon. Your tags are now ready to use as luggage tags, gift tags, decorative tags, or other item.

That’s it!

Making Card Pockets

Melanie Statnick the published artist/writer has a lot of her artwork in art galleries and shops extensively in NC with international private collections. She is one person who misses to have library cards in the back of books with memories of having to look up books in the card cataloguing boxes being so clear in her mind.

She altered paper library pockets with Silk Acrylic paints. She then painted the first colour coat onto the pocket first, then used a paint brush to apply the second colour to the applicator and rubbed it over the stencil onto the pockets in a circular motion. Drying the paints is the next step while adding some stamps and paper collage sheets and embellishments using a gel medium or mod podge. To outline the images you will use black Pitt pen, white get pen and then add some Stickles. Valentine theme will come in handy to stuff the pockets with. They are best for sticking a magnet strip on the back or onto your refrigerator to leave notes for your sweetheart.With her happy and whimsy style, Melanie creates art daily from her private studio. From her website www.melaniestatnickart.com you can get and learn more about Melanie.

Making a Customized Grunge Mat

Anjuli Johnson began her art career as a scrapbooker, and it’s been an evolutionary process ever since. Since she loves all things mixed media- paper, paint, pens, wire, gears, and clay she is constantly trying to push through her fears to discover and develop her talents, meet new people, and learn from those around her. Being a new home owner her head is full of plans for how she can update and improve certain things… new tile in the bathrooms, different coloured accent walls, perhaps some new kitchen cabinets at some point and of course, a brand new art studio.

While looking for décor ideas before deciding what she likes and want to incorporate in her home, she has been spending months scouring Pinterest and internet images and many of the gallery walls caught her attention. She knew she wanted to frame some small art pieces rather than photos and the position was to be on the outside of the mat, rather than having it framed underneath. She also wanted to do a whitewash grunge type of effect rather than having a plain white or black mat.

So what did she do?She used the cardboard insert from the frames she bought as mats and used gel medium on book pages to transfer text onto the surface. Once the medium dried, she dipped her fingers in water and rubbed off the excess paper to show the bottom text transferred to the cardboard. She used watered down acrylic paint as a wash and applied several coats until it was the colourshe wanted. She did let the cardboard dry in between before adding watermark stamped images in a few places to complete her mixed media mat.

Making an Autumn Layout?

It is on Sandra Pares’ site where you will find a lot of art and craft products. The colours and textures on many mixed media art amaze her and she confesses to be enjoying creating and getting her hands dirty with paint and gesso. With autumn having refused to come to her land, she also loves the forest on this season and the trees are wonderful with intense colours and a lot of contrast, ideal for shaping it with mixed media. This is how she does it...

Supplies used:

· Dylusions inks spray: ground coffee, melted chocolate, lemon zest and pure sunshine

· Autumn Leaves drawn in a cardstock

· 12″x12″ watercolour paper

· Gesso and 1 photo

· Primary Elements and Silks Acrylic Glaze

· A brush and sponge

· 12″x12″ Cosmic Swirl Template and scrap paper

· Some stencils to make texture like punchinella

· Gel medium

What to do:

· Paste some scrap paper with gel medium over watercolour paper to add some texture. Then, put a thin layer of gesso, without covering the scrap paper.

· Add a little colour in the background with Lemon zest and Pure sunshine

· Put the template in a part of the paper and with the brown ink spray the template.

· Add more texture in the background. With a sponge and Silks Acrylic Glaze stencil different templates with punchinella.

· Stick with gel medium all missing elements: doily shape, photography and leaves. The result will be an Autumn Layout with a lot of texture and contrast.

There you go!

Using Dina Wakely Paints – Michelle Style

Michelle G. Brown understands that many of us have an inner need to create and by learning a few basic techniques the amazing world of mixed media art is accessible to everyone. It is for this reason and the passion in her that she gives you this painting tutorial while using Dina Wakely Paints.

Materials and tools needed.

· Dina Wakely Paints

· 10” x 12” canvas

· Scrap paper

· Sequence Scrap

· Masking Tape

· Gesso

· Archival Inks

· Removable adhesive

· Stencil Girl Stencils

· Black markers

· Impasto medium

· Blending tool

Painting Process

· Gather up your blank canvas or art journal

· Prime with Gesso and leave to dry

· Add texture with Impasto medium and Sequence Scrap

· Leave overnight to dry

· Add colour with the acrylic paints

· Continue to build up colours and Leave to fully dry

· Use the Masking tape to add masked lines to the painted canvas.

· Add a layer of Gesso,applied with an old credit card

· While gesso is still wet, carefully remove the masking tape. Take care with this step; it can get a bit messy.

· Using your range of black markers, outline “roads” and add other features.

· Gather your stencils and stencil with the Archival inks.

· Put the stencil in place and add a little masking tape to hold it.

· Add ink and remove the stencil as well as the masks.

You only need to add a few finishing touch ups to your work and you are good to admire your work.

Have you ever Tried Making Encaustic and Origami Collage?

Vicki Ross has always been involved deeply in the creative arts, from professional soft crafts publications to French Hand-sewing, stencilling to macramé, oil painting to encaustics. She believes in the healing power of creating and she is focused on sharing her journey to art and how life events can shape us through creativity. She also loves the local thrift store since she is always wanting to learn and see how she can incorporate various types of treasures into my regular art. She tries out there craft on various materials and still gets it right all the way. Some of the materials she will use include 4″ square tumbled marble tiles, plain encaustic medium and pollen that you will get from flowers.

Each of them gets a pour because she wanted to keep the three dimensional look of the folded paper. After two pours, fusing, she takes a brush and make sure all crevices are filled. When cool, she scraps back as far as she can, again maintaining the 3-D looks. It is after this that she declares all victory to her work. However she admits that it is not an easy task. Here creativity takes toll of the whole project and the willingness to learn and create.

Making Halloween Decorations using Recycled Wood

Shari Welch is a volunteer for SCRAP Denton where she is on the education committee, teaches workshops, art camp, and performs art demos. With her art passion and being a mixed media artist, she enjoys helping others discover their creativity. She is fortunate to have a creative reuse store in her town and SCRAP Denton is where 75% or more of her materials come from. What makes it even better is being able to recycle as well. For your local home improvement she advises that you visit habitat for humanity stores and scrap wood bins. This is because construction sites are begging to get rid of their small scraps of wood. This I show she does it:

Painting the pieces the colour she wants the cracks to be. This technique can be done the sides, top, and bottom so I taped the edges with painters tape. To achieve a smooth coverage use a finger to spread the glue. You want to let the glue sit for a minute. The glue should be tacky not dry.

Apply the top coat and in random directions making sure that the bristles are slightly breaking through the glue.

Leave it alone for a few hours or even better over night for best crackle results.

For the front and back apply printed tissue paper with PPA adhesive. This adhesive is perfect for thin papers.

Use Tim Holtz distress ink in black soot for the edges.

Finish this project by gluing all the pieces together; add some images, yarn and shiny embellishments.

Mixed Media Art Good Design and Composition

Every time you are creating any art work, the following are the elements of a good design that you should put in place:

· Proportion
This deals with the size of the parts that make up the whole. Are they all proportional or are some too dominant and others to small?

· Unity/Variety
Variety is often linked with unity. While you want to have unity, you don’t want it to be boring. When a painting has unity, there is a feeling that it all works together as a whole and is complete as well as having harmony

· Contrast
This implies to the differences when you compare one thing to and you can use ways like diagonal lines against verticals, colors that jangle, lights against darks, soft edges against hard edges, intense color against neutral color etc. Differing values in a painting can be dramatic.

· Rhythm /repetition
Rhythm is created by having an element repeat itself in the painting and always it has repetition. Repeating shapes can lead the eye through a painting and give it rhythm.

· Balance
Balance is the key to a successful painting. The design must be balanced for it to work effectively. If the design is balanced then the scale of it is also in balance. When something is balanced it looks right.

· Focus/Emphasis
Every painting needs a centre of interest and without one; the painting is rendered without much thought by the artist. Having a theme or story to your painting gives your painting emphasis.

There you have it. Happy creating!

How to Send a Mail Art

The love of mixed media has taken over most aspects of Tamara Dinius’ creative journey the main reason being the fact that mixed media allows for a broad range of styles and anyone can find success in this form of artistic expression. She reveals the aspect of mail art which surprises many other people.

Mail art is created by the artist and generally sent via the postal service to the end receiver. It is an interesting art because every person who handles the mail en route will have an opportunity to view and enjoy your piece of artwork. Tamara uses mixed media techniques with various envelopes that have become quite grand. She has experimented using the standard goldenrod office envelopes, as well as the brightly coloured envelopes. While she has enjoyed using all the different products at some point she goes back to the basic white envelope for most of her mailings.

Mail art is easy to send and does not require anything special prior to posting at your local post office. Though it is not required at her local post office, she adds a white label with the recipients address for ease of sorting. The holidays are a wonderful time of sending mails to your loved ones. Get creative with the mail art and put a cheer on their faces.

Be Fearless and Learn How to Draw

You must have heard of Melanie Statnick the published artist/writer from North Carolina and one who creates art daily from her private studio. She is known for her happy and whimsy style of art. It is common that everyone would want to shop for all the newest toys on your mind the next time you get paid. However, when you’re on a budget this is the worst thing you can do with your already tight income.

Many are the times she has heard from her students statements like “I can’t draw a straight line”. Or just plain “I can’t draw”. However being a self-taught artist she believes that she can learn anything and having seen so many nice things from the stores, she still does not buy them because she is determined to learn to draw her own images and save the 20 bucks.

Over time she has sat with her journals, pens, pencils, markers and watercolours and has been teaching herself to draw. It all takes practice. In addition, There are so many books on how to draw and websites that have an abundance of inspiration. The secret is that we have to get past being perfect, realistic and spot on. It would amaze you to know how many people appreciate the imperfect cute doodle.

Be fearless with your drawings and learn to let go of how many Facebook “likes” your photo

Making a Project using a Printer Tray

Shari Welch is a mixed media artist known for using reuse and recycle materials in her artwork. She is passionate about mixed media art and enjoys helping others discover their creativity. With the existence of type cases or printers trays which are divided into sections to hold the various letters of a typeface for print every creative artist is now taking advantage of these unique frames to create one of a kind piece of art.

Printer trayscome in different sizes, colours, shapes, and number of sections. There is so much skill to it and it is mostly a matter of layering different elements. You can create one that is very simple or more detailed like it is demonstrated below:

• Chose a tray and use washi tape to decorate the edge of the frame. Give it some interest to define some of the edges of the sections.
• Interesting coordinating papers and printed cork sheets will do to fill up the background sections. Distressing papers edges will be held up by sanding, tearing, embossing.
• You can add items from a trip, little bits and pieces of things you love, collections, photos etc. This is where all the fun is. 

However the secret of this art is to lay everything out before you glue anything down including the background, the type, charms and everything else. Also consider using 3D foam adhesive pieces to help your items look as if they are coming off the page.

Using Craft Kits form Flying Unicorn

Kim Kelley is borderline obsessive about her crafting and her art. She loves mixed media art because you are free to go beyond your comfort zone, using your imagination and exploring on anything comes to your mind set. She scoops up anything that catches her eye, but there are times that she enjoys opening up kits that have everything in it that goes together; from matching papers to colour coordinating flowers. If you have the same problem then you may want to do what she does and purchase kits. A kit allows you to stop guessing about putting things together.

Flying Unicorn is where Kim buys her kits. The kit comes with a triangle shaped canvas; which she loves working with, some flowers, metal pieces ink and sprays. She finds herself in a rather red mood rather than purple so she changes from bits to bits. So how does she do it?

• You shall use glass bead medium by Golden, heavy gel by Golden and white flake also by Golden for the base layer on the canvas. Apply it haphazardly so it does not look the same throughout.
• After allowing it to dry, add paints. Using sponges add Crimson, Burnt Orange and Metallic Russet Lumiere paints by Jacquard onto the canvas. After the layer dries add a mix of black acrylic paint, silver powder and gel medium; sponging it on and with a bit of water to wipe it off.
• Add some flowers, metal leaves, film strip and of course the quote.

There you have it, your imagination and creation has come to be.