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Painting with Mixed Media

Painting with Mixed Media is a fun exploration of the many different ways you can mix
traditional paint with other media to create an exciting range of artwork.

There's a world of mark-making materials and inspiring surfaces to explore. If you've

always wanted to combine different media.

The five main painting mediums used are acrylics, watercolours, oils, pastels and tempera.
and also with other materials, such as wax, gels, powders, gelatine and more.

One of the strengths of Painting with Mixed Media is the sheer number of techniques it
demonstrates, including: painting, drawing, layering, collaging, texturising, sgraffito, create
peeled paint effect, mono printing, frottage (technique of rubbing from an uneven surface),
rubbing, slicing, weaving and more! By using these techniques, you can make collages,
scrapbook pages, decorations, greeting cards - any type of artwork you can think of, really.

The artwork in Painting with Mixed Media also spans across a range of styles and
subjects, from representational art (such as the floral still life and richly coloured portrait
below):

Painting with Mixed Media encourages you to step out of the box, to move beyond the
concept of simply applying paint to canvas and to try new things, explore new
combinations, and experiment with new techniques.

The pages are sprinkled with finished art accompanied by a caption that lists the materials
used to create the piece. These examples can spark ideas and get the ball rolling. Painting
with Mixed Media also contains step-by-step demos that show the artwork at different
stages in the process, with instructions.

A mixed media painting is one that combines different painting and drawing materials and
methods, rather than only one medium. Any materials can be used, including collage items
such as pages from magazines, newspaper, photographs, fabric, soil, or packaging. Or a
mixed media piece can be as "simple" as using two mediums, such as acrylic paints with
pastel on top.

History of Mixed Media Paintings

Mixed media isn't a 20th-century phenomenon, although in previous centuries artists were
less experimental in what they used. For example, gold leaf was often added to church
paintings, Leonardo da Vinci mixed pastels with other drawing media, William Blake used
watercolour washes in his prints, and Edgar Degas combined pastels with charcoal and
printing inks.

Current artists working in mixed media include New York-based artist Lawrence Weiner,
who is regarded as a founder of post minimalism conceptual art. He is known for
incorporating text into his works, such as large installation pieces in galleries. The New
York Times once described him as a "language-based sculptor."
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German artist Rosemarie Trockel is another contemporary artist working in mixed media.
As an extreme example, during a 2013 exhibition, Trockel found a dead moth in the
museum and quickly incorporated it into one of her works on display. The act of adding this
unusual medium added a new layer of meaning to the work, by calling to mind a prior
video piece of hers featuring a moth.

When selecting your mediums, remember that one must be wet and one dry. More than
two mediums may be used. Mixing different brands of the same type of paint doesn't count
as mixed media.

Something that you can turn from a dry into a wet medium by adding water or solvent
(e.g., watercolour pencils) counts as one medium, not two. Watercolour paint (wet) and
watercolour pencil (dry) is OK, but the paint must come from the tube or pans, not the
pencils (i.e., applied in bigger quantities than you can easily lift from a pencil).

Collage items count as "dry." If you use pencil, it must be an integral part of the painting,
not merely the initial sketch to establish the composition.

Using oil pastels and oil paint sticks on top of oil paint counts, though paint sticks must be
used differently than how you apply paint with a brush.

Suggested Art Supplies for Mixed Media Painting

Have a look in your art supplies box for supplies you haven't used in a while. They'll likely
be a perfect fit for a mixed media project. If you're feeling stuck, look for any of the items
on this list:

• Heavy-weight paper that will stand up to some reworking

• Oil pastels that can be used over acrylics, watercolours, and oil paint
• Hard pastel sticks for sgraffito into still-wet paint
• Soft pastels to add over watercolour or matte acrylic (glossy acrylic may be too smooth
a surface for it to stick to) and work into still-wet paint

• Charcoal for working underneath, on top, and into the paint. If you don't like dark and
messy, perhaps this is not the best choice for you.

• Ink-tense blocks and pencils, which are like watercolour pencils but insoluble when dry
• Watercolour pencils and crayons
• Waterproof pens
• Oil sticks
Overview of Mixed Media Art

Mixed media is very closely related to other art forms such as assemblage and collage.
Assemblage is a 3-dimensional sculptural form, in which found objects are "assembled"
together in a quirky and unique way. Collage involves a rearrangement of pre-existing
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elements, such as cut-up paper of all sorts (newspaper clippings, gift wrap, vintage
ephemera, old book pages, stamps, postcards, etc), as well as various other small items
glued to the surface of the paper, canvas, or wood.

In general, mixed media can certainly incorporate 3-dimensional objects and things like
cut-up paper, but for the purposes of this topic, we'll focus on artwork whose main feature
is usually a combination (or mix) of media, such as acrylics, oils, crayons, pencils, etc.

With mixed media, anything goes. However, you will need to take some ordinary
precautions, such as making sure that your foundation (base layer) is sturdy enough to
accept whatever you throw on top of it without buckling or bending. You may also want to
do some smaller tests to examine how the media work together, to make sure you can
achieve the desired effect. For instance, applying ink on top of watercolour will have a very
different look than watercolour3 applied on top of ink. So it's best to fiddle around on a
small-scale to figure out how the media interacts, before attempting a large-scale or
detailed artwork!