Mixed Media Artist

Bear Lake Trail, before Sometimes it’s well worth reaching back into your own archives and revisiting something. I went to hike the Rockies with my family when I was in high school. I love this particular shot taken from Bear Lake Trail, and I’ve used it for several different pieces over the years. So, how about surreal? Bear Lake Trail, after There are only a few steps used in making a surreal landscape like this in Photoshop , but that doesn’t mean that it’s fast and easy! I spent more time on this piece than on many that have far more steps. Take you time and play around…it’ll be worth it! 1. Open your original image in Photoshop and size it as desired. 2. Make a copy layer of your image to fool with. 3. Go to Image –> Adjustments –> Invert 4. Add a curves adjustment layer and go to town! 5. Adjust lightness, saturation, and contrast to suit. 6. Use the Multiply blending mode for your adjustment layer. 7. Crop a portion of the landscape that pleases you. Copyrig...

The Owl and the Pussycat I shared this pair of painted sandals before, but I thought I should show you a second pair and maybe suggest that it might be a nice project for a quick pair of summer wearable art. I don’t like buying new shoes. In fact, I tend to wear the same pair of sandals all year, even in the snow. When they get worn out, I do buy a new pair (the exact same style…aren’t I exciting?), but I can’t stand to just throw out the old pair. So I usually paint them. Acrylic paints , a black fine-tipped marker , and clean sandals are all you need! 1. Choose your colors of acrylic paint: a main background color and a couple of accent colors. 2. Using a sponge or foam brush , paint all the leather surfaces of the straps with your main color. Mine was Cobalt turquoise . Let the paint dry. 3. Lightly sponge on your accent colors. I’ve always found that I get a better look if I return to my main color last, and lightly sponge it on as if it were also an accent color. M...

Here’s the image that I started with for this piece: It wasn’t high resolution or anything: just a pretty picture. I used Golden’s Digital Ground White , and stroked it onto a piece of waxed paper, adding a few layers until the piece was covered where I planned to print. The image printed out quite well, and stayed a bit wet for awhile. I didn’t worry about that, though, since I planned to do a transfer. The transfer was made onto plain white copy paper, using the instructions for a basic paper image transfer . Once the transfer was completed and dry, this is how I assembled the collage: 1. Paint a wrapped canvas frame. I used dark teal green acrylic. 2. Apply a wash of gesso, thinned with water. 3. Add layers of cheesecloth, using matte medium to adhere them. 4. Slice up the image transfer and use matte medium to adhere it to the canvas. Use a layer of waxed paper and a heavy book to make it dry flat. 5. Add a bit of black to your gesso to create a medium gray tone, and wash the piece...

Have fun with Interactivate: Tessellate ! If playing with this cool tool isn't enough, you can look at lots of tessellation art at the Tessellation Database . In addition, there's always Tessellations.org ...check out the tessellating frenchfries :-) Here is one of my previous posts with ideas about how to use these patterns: Expanded Squares : Making a digital stamp Copyright 2008 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact. Technorati Tags: mixed media , collage , assemblage , digital art , photography , altered books , art journals

Burst Isaiah 44:21-23 "Remember these things, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I have made you, you are my servant; O Israel, I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.” Sing for joy, O heavens, for the LORD has done this; shout aloud, O earth beneath. Burst into song, you mountains, you forests and all your trees, for the LORD has redeemed Jacob, he displays his glory in Israel." Nita Leland writes, in Creative Collage Techniques : With nonobjective design, the picture has no apparent reference to a subject….Instead, the formal elements of design are the picture. The picture is "about" color, line, or shape without a specific realistic image to create the visual sensation. So here’s the problem: I can’t really tell you exactly how to make an abstract collage. I have no way of knowing which design elements are going to speak to you. My piece is a combina...

Time and tide wait for no man. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer Remember that torn paper landscape I made about a month ago? Here it is! 1. Create a torn paper landscape with the colors and papers of your choice. 2. Scan it and open the file in Photoshop or your favorite image editing software. All of the images that you want to use together will need to be saved at the same resolution, so pick your size and deal with your images now. 3. Duplicate your background layer, which will be the landscape. 4. Add your largest image, which will form a “frame” for the smaller ones you want to add. I desaturated my image, dragged it into place, and used the overlay mode for blending. The opacity was lowered until it looked right to me. In this case, it’s at about 30%. 5. Drag and drop your smaller images, each into its own layer. I put the image of the eyes on a transparent background, and used a soft erasing paintbrush to make the edges blend with the layers below. Copyright 2008 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be ...

Materials and Tools: Decorative papers Heavy piece of watercolor paper for foundation Exacto knife, straight edge, and cutting board Matte medium Foam brush Waxed paper 1. Create a geometric background by carefully cutting papers and gluing into place on a foundation piece of watercolor paper. 2. Cover the piece with waxed paper and weight it until completely dry. 3. Scan your piece and make multiple copies in Photoshop (or other image editing software). Store them for future use. 4. Open a photograph of an image that you want to use in the digital portion of your collage. Use the selection tools to remove the background completely. 5. Drag and drop your image onto the scanned background you’ve created. Add text digitally, or print out your collage and add the text manually. Copyright 2008 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains inta...

A super-easy background or perhaps even a finished collage on it’s own! Well, mine isn’t finished, but yours could be if you made it more artfully than I did ;-) I like to scan these and use them for the background of a digital piece. Materials & Tools: Large sheet of heavy watercolor paper Selection of colored and decorative papers, stock paper weight Matte medium Foam brush Waxed paper Exacto knife Clear plastic measure Cutting board 1. Tear stock papers into uneven strips and arrange in an overlapped pattern. 2. When the papers are arranged to your satisfaction, lift them one at a time and adhere them in place with matte medium. Brush a thin coat of matte medium over top of all papers too. 3. Let it dry completely, covered with waxed paper and weighted down. 4. Use your measure to square up the corners, and cut the piece to whatever size you want, evening up the edges if desired. 5. For more options, scan your piece and play with the colors. I adjusted the hue, saturat...

The background fabric for this bead-embroidered piece is actually felt. When you see it close up, it looks for all the world like rough leather (moreso in real life than in my picture!). Although I’m not philosophically opposed to using leather, I know many people are, and it’s nice to have alternatives. It’s also a lot easier to stitch through than leather! You’re not going to believe how easy it is to do this surface treatment. I’ve asked people to try to figure out what the material is without letting them feel the backside of it, and they always guess leather! Materials: Square of white felt Fusible web Extra heavy acrylic gel Regular acrylic gel Acrylic paints - raw sienna , burnt sienna , interference gold Tools: Iron Parchment paper Foam brush Paper towel Heat gun 1. Iron fusible web to the felt. 2. Smear the surface with acrylic gels. Use fingers. Let partly dry. 3. Drip on light paint color using foam brush. Dab lightly with paper towel. 4. Drip ...

Now is the time to do things: To make art, to fall in love, to be the person you want to be. There is no "later". Waiting until "later" to do things becomes "never". It took several days to make Now, Not Later . First, there were a couple of steps that needed time to dry overnight before moving on, and second, it just took me awhile to figure out what all I wanted to include in the assemblage. I tend to pull out all my possible materials that might work and leave them sitting around until something gels. In this case, it took a bit longer than maybe is usual for me. Anyway, the first step was to go to Home Depot and buy a new tool…always a good start! I got a forstner bit for my drill press. It cuts a hole with a fairly flat bottom to it; only the little guide hole mars the flat surface. 1. I used a wood heart, but you can use any shape you want. Cut holes where you’d like to place a picture embedded in resin. Gesso the entire piece and let it dry. 2. Pai...

Every now and again, I feel the urge to pull out an old favorite and mix it up again. That was the case the day I made this CD clock. My daughter and I made quite a few of them when she was still in high school. It was a quick and easy project that we could bang out fast, and the clocks made dynamite handmade gifts! I started by buying a pre-made clock works with a swinging pendulum. This one was ready to hang on the wall just as is. The other main thing you will need is an old CD. I used one of the vast collection of AOL CDs that I still have hanging around the studio. One down, 99 more to go! Materials and tools: CD Clock works and battery Gesso Acrylic paints (crimson, burgundy, citrine, purple/gold halo) Printouts on vellum Acrylic medium or glue Sponges Small brushes Heat gun Scissors Waxed paper 1. Sponge gesso all over the front of the CD. Dry thoroughly, and use additional coats of gesso until it’s completely covered. 2. Sponge on the acrylic paints of your choice. I listed ...

This is one of those really fun little projects that you can do in practically no time, or that you can spend a lot of effort and thought on to make it *really* spectacular! I opted for easy and fun, using strips from CD covers and inserts, and mounting them on 140 lb watercolor paper. 1. Slice up strips of paper, both solids and patterns (or with words like mine), and feel free to add non-paper stuff like ribbons and other fibers. 2. Chose which will be your vertical "warp" pieces and which you will weave through as a "weft". 3. Line up the warp pieces and attach them to your table with a piece of low-tack masking tape. 4. Weave the weft pieces alternately under and over the warp. You are free to do this unevenly if you desire, skipping warp pieces, adding short weft strips, etc. For an example of a woven paper piece which uses pieces cut into wavy shapes rather than straight, see this post on making woven paper pieces . Copyright 2008 Cyndi Lavin. Not to be re...

I truly hope that no one finds this offensive! Around Christmas this past year, I was really missing my son. He was my first born, and his birthday is December 29. Now that he’s a married man, we can’t expect to see him every Christmas anymore, but this was our first time without him. As I was reading some of the traditional scripture passages for Christmas, I came across Isaiah 9:6. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…” It struck a chord with me in a new way this year, as it most likely did the year he was born. Maybe not, maybe I was too busy at that time! Anyway, I decided to make a simple layered digital collage using a picture of my newborn in my arms. It helped :-) I’ve previously shared my technique for creating digital collage using scanned background papers . For this specific collage, I used four layers: 1. The background layer is a piece of watercolor paper textured with gel medium and cheesecloth that I painted and scanned. I altered the colors in Photos...

Last week I showed you the first half of my experiment with the heavily textured collage papers that I made, which was a geometric collage . This week, it’s an organic collage , which emerged when I tore up the papers that were left. This one is called I Sing for Joy : I Sing for Joy Just like last week, I started with a masonite board as my substrate. 1. Paint the edges and top of the masonite with black acrylic. 2. Tear up some large and some small pieces of textured collage papers and foil. The tutorials to make the ones shown in this piece are here and here. 3. Mix your torn pieces with some that are cut straight if you’d like. 4. Arrange and rearrange until you’ve got a composition that you like with the papers. Use polymer medium to adhere them to the masonite and to each other. Cover the piece, weight it, and let it dry. 5. I added a piece of cork lightly painted with the same citrine color as I used on the ripped edges. I also added a silk leaf that was enhanced with ...

Back in January, I shared a batch of collage papers with you that I made which stressed the textures. They used a limited number of colors so that they’d all work together well in future projects. Well, the time has come! I decided that I wanted to do a bit of an experiment and do two projects: one very geometric and one very organic. I like both ways of working, so it seemed most sensible to do the geometric one first. That way, I could just tear into my papers afterwards and not have to worry about whether I’d left enough to make the shapes I needed. Here’s the first result, called God’s Gifts God’s Gifts To prepare, gather up the collage papers you have on hand, or make some. There are tutorials for my papers here and here , among other places on this blog! I used a piece of masonite board as the substrate for this collage. I love how strong it is, preventing warping when you’re using heavily manipulated papers like these. 1. Paint the sides of the board with black acrylic or bla...