By The Tree . . .

This is the original painted background of the "colorful" picture below. I made flowers out of different papers and glued them on. Now I think it looks like a real nature lover's mixed media painting. :-)

Soul Food Week 5

I didn't follow the full instructions for week 5's lesson. I did a mixed media seascape sunset instead.

Life Book 2013 - Week 43

I haven't done a good job keeping up with the weekly Life Book lessons for this year. It's still very difficult for me to just let myself paint and experiment with mixed media. This past week's lesson was about using real leaves to stamp patterns unto a background, and using sticks or whatever other things we found in nature to add marks into the paint.

The main element in the painting was suppose to be a portrait of a woman with some journaling. I don't like the lessons with all the female portraits in them, so I decided to create a scene from nature instead. I had purchased some round pictures to put in bottle caps from The Gossamer Tearoom, and used them to create flowers with. My final design is a little wild, but I think you can see the leaf stamping I did. The ones in dark purple turned out the best. You can see them if you click on the picture to look at the larger size.

Marguerite's Flowers and Rust

That's the name I gave to a mixed media painting I just finished today. I'm very excited about the way it turned out! Marguerite sent me a wonderful piece of rusted metal that fell off of her favorite trunk. She thought I could use it in some kind of art work. It just so happens I love rusty metal. She also happened to send me a picture of the trunk it came from.

The trunk certainly is a treasure!

I recently downloaded a class presented by Seth Apter through Cloth, Paper, Scissors. It's Lesson # 6 in a series, and the price was very reasonable. The lesson was called "Dimensional Stenciling." I decided to try this technique in a mixed media piece that I could also include Marguerite's gift of the rusty metal.

I first tried to paint a background using acrylics to try to simulate a piece of copper that had turned turquoise. I didn't quite get the look I wanted, but I was still happy with the results.

I used gesso to fill in a stencil to get a dimensional branch on the background. I then painted the top of a bronze colored tin candy box the size of an Altoid box with a turquoise color paint so it would also look antiqued. I glued the rusty metal from the trunk on top of that. Here is the finished result:

I have to say that after creating a piece of art like that, I finally feel like a real artist! Thanks Marguerite and Seth for the inspiration.

Steampunk Beetles

I did another version of the steampunk beetle project that I posted a while ago when I was taking a class by Kelly Hoernig. My original one was done in reds. I did this one as a gift for my friend Shane. I never showed the first one after I framed it, so this will let you see what the finished version is supposed to look like.

Mixed media and steampunk are so much fun to do!

Life Book 2013 Week 10 - Heart Gratitude

Yay! Back to mixed media! I didn't follow all of the instructions for this lesson. There is a layer of writing that talks about the people I feel "heart gratitude" for. I didn't use rolled up pieces of paper with more writing about the same people to create the heart with as I felt I said enough in the other layer. I cut out and collaged a heart instead. I need to work on my lettering skills still, but . . .

Life Book 2012 Week 45 - Celebration

I've used my character "Billizetti" in a lot of my digital art. I created many different versions of him using Photoshop. In celebration of reaching November and having done 17 mixed media paintings to put into my Life Book, I painted Billizetti by hand for the first time. It seemed fitting to finally create a mixed media version of him. Yay!

My Artwork On Seth Apter's Blog On Sunday

Seth Apter sent me an email saying he is posting a piece of my artwork on his blog this Sunday, November 11. It was part of an art project that went along with his book The Pulse of Mixed Media. Seth took selected pieces of the project with him to display at his many book signing stops. That way people could look at real pieces of mixed media art firsthand. I hope you will be able to stop by his blog on Sunday. http://thealteredpage.blogspot.com/

(If you haven't purchased his book yet, I have an Amazon link for it on the right hand column of my blog so you can check it out.)

Life Book 2012 Class - Week 40

Our instructions for this week's class were about creating a collage using sewing, paper and material, and adding in any other accessories as we wanted. (buttons, glitter, etc.) We were suppose to celebrate where we are now or how we are feeling as compared to what we've been through during the past year. Yikes! What does someone do with that? My collage, as usual, ended up pretty crazy. But I'm happy with it, because it's all mixed-media instead of anything digital.

Since I spent the first half of the year watching my mother die slowly, and much of the year battling the same old depression and anxiety issues, the words came to my mind "still here." Being here still is definitely something to celebrate.

I had to do hand stitches, and some aren't showing up in the scan, but this ended up being a fun project to do. The moose (big and tiny), tree and small leaves on the left are actually buttons I sewed on. Being out in nature makes me happy, so I was trying to add those elements to it. Anyway, it is what it is! :O)