Mixed Media Postcard Art Tutorial

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To celebrate our 4th birthday, Michelle hosted a crafty online tutorial to create mixed media postcard art along with give-aways (now closed), a challenge and blog link swaps, all thrown into one action packed tutorial!

Together we will review our favorite mixed media techniques and put them together to create postcards that we can share with our friends and family. Regardless of your current skill level or preferred style, you will come away inspired to get creating for the Holiday season, as well as “meeting” member of our Mixed Media community.

Using gesso and acrylic paints to create postcard art

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Postcard Tutorial

Thanks for coming along and playing with us. If you missed our tutorial, here is the recording

Our competition to win one of our fabulous postcards is now closed! The winners are (16 in total!):

  • Jasmine – Ottawa
  • Lucille – British Columbia
  • Carol – Winnipeg
  • Meredith – Calgary
  • Marsha – Des Moines
  • June – England
  • Jean – Australia
  • Karen – Virginia
  • Jan – Ohio
  • Marilyn – Alabama
  • Clemencia – Florida
  • Sue – Pennsylvania
  • Virginia – Texas
  • Janet – Missouri
  • Dana – Ontario
  • Marion – Germany

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Why Postcard Art?

And WHY postcard art? you ask. We will play with many mixed media techniques that can be as simple, or as complex as you like. Regardless of your preferred style, you can create wonderful backgrounds that can then be turned into postcards, ATCs, bookmarks or greeting cards. We’ll look at postcards that are easy to make and easier to post to our global mixed media community.

mixed media art on cereal box cardboard

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For more inspiration:

our Mixed Media Art Technique Sheets ~10 projects and techniques available for immediate download ~ are here

Mixed Media Art Technique Sheets

or buy them individually here ~ just scroll down and choose the one you want NOW!

 

or our Creating Layers in Mixed Media Art book

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 Share your Postcards

Whatever has inspired you in this months online tutorial, whether it’s to create your own postcards or something else, we would love to see what you’ve created.

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Materials to get you started in Mixed Media Art

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Over the last few Tips Videos we have covered using cereal box cardboard, using found objects in our mixed media painting and the tools needed to get started. In this episode, we look at the mixed media materials you need to get started.

Materials for Mixed Media Art - Mixed Media Art Tips Video

Michelle runs through the basic materials and mediums she uses in many of her mixed media creations. She reminds you that you don’t need all of these materials to get started. After you have a few of the basic paints and mediums, and had fun creating a few mixed media pieces, you can then extend your collection.

 

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Here you can see the range of shades you can achieve with two paint colours and a white for creating shades – this allows your paint collection to expand into many different colors and hues. This gives each of the three canvases a range of colors, from the very dark violet to the light pink wash.

Mixed Media materials and canvas backgrounds

The colors used were violet or dark purple, magenta or maroon and a plain white.

using two paints and white gives a range of shades

To mix the colors, I use an old styrene tray (as shown in Tools needed to get started in Mixed Media Art) and put the two colors at each end and the white across the middle. This makes it easier to create a 1:1 mix for each colors, and then a 1:2 mix by adding white to the 1:1 mix.

use a simple paint tray to mix paints

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References for the products mentioned in the video:

Creating Layers Online Tutorial

Gesso

Gel Medium

Impasto Medium

Varnish

Acrylic Paints

Spray Varnish

So thank you for joining us here for this Mixed Media Tips Video. As always we are happy to hear from you and LOVE seeing your artwork – you can do that by emailing us at CreateMixedMediaArt @ gmail.com or heading over to our Creating Mixed Media Art Facebook page.

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Tools needed to get started in Mixed Media Art

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Here in the Mixed Media Art community, we like to encourage people who are just starting out in mixed media to get their hands dirty as quickly as possible; to do this we don’t suggest long lists of tools, materials and supplies. We prefer to start with the least amount of stuff and only buy what we really need. We also don’t need expensive tools to get us going – there is NOTHING worse than spending lots of money on supplies and then not wanting to use them in case we “ruin” or “waste” them. We know – we have all been there! And worse than worse (is that the correct expression?) is not using supplies due to not wanting to waste them, only to find out (months later) that our supplies have dried up or been stored incorrectly and they are useless anyway! On the agony!

So enough of the delay and hesitation – the best way to learn and improve our mixed media art skills is by playing and practising and actually MAKING ART! Who would have thought? 😉

Here are the basic tools you need to get started with mixed media painting

Here Michelle runs through a basic list of tools needed to get you started in many types of mixed media projects.

References:

Creating Layers Online Tutorial

Making Memories foam stamps (Apparently this stamp set is now discontinued – sorry!)

Impasto Medium

We would love to hear what you think! Do YOU have any thoughts on what you would like us to show you?

Leave a comment below!

Happy creating.

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“Acrylic Solutions” by Julie Prichard & Chris Cozen

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Today we review the mixed media painting book “Acrylic Solutions” by Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen. It’s published by North Light Books 2013. It includes everything you need to get started with acrylic painting, both on canvas and a range of other surfaces. The book will also provide the experienced artist with the “why” and “how” paints and mediums behave as they do, as well as a variety of techniques. These are all pulled together to work through a series of lovely paintings.

 

And the WINNER of the Acrylic Solutions giveaway is ….

Elena Manali, from Athens Greece

ELENA MANALI says:

Hello! I started using acrylics the last ten months.I was afraid of using them but since I made my first trial I was amazed with that medium! So many colours and the texture and the depth I can give in my mixed media collages I feel like I am hand building as a sculptor! I would be very happy to win a copy of the Acrylic solutions and I am sure that it will lead me to new paths in my work!

Elena,
Athens Greece

Thank you all for your entries!

 

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Disclosure: This book has been provided by North Light Books for the purpose of review. All opinions are that of the MixedMediaArt team. The links on this page are affiliate links and any purchases help to support the ongoing work by MixedMediaArt.


 

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