“Start where you are, use what your have, do what you can.”
— Arthur Ashe
The magic of mixed media art making comes from the layers.
First layers can be marks made in paint or pen, they can be collage or textural. Sometimes the whole surface is covered, sometimes it’s just a few marks to break up that beginning expanse of nothing.
scribbles and doodles break up the space on the blank paper.
When you keep in mind that what goes down on the first layer will likely get covered up, it’s much easier to feel free to experiment.
first layers don’t need to be pretty!
I don’t strive to make something beautiful, I just play. Letting one idea feed the next and seeing where it leads.
Experiment by combining patterns of mark making on different surfaces – thin copier paper reacts very differently to paint and ink than watercolor paper, or tissue paper, or fabric. Investigate some of the infinite possibilities!
I like having a few pieces on the go at the same time. Ideas cross pollinate between them, and I can swap from one to another while the layers dry.
Crumple or fold paper so the color can seep into the creases.
Consider how many ways there are to apply color to surface. Paint brushes are just the beginning, some of my favourite tools are not conventional things you’ll find in the art supply store 😉
Watch how the first layers of the first color of Twelvty began.
First layers made in Yellow for TWELVTY 2020
Every month this year I am making a series of pieces in just one color, so at the end of the year I can combine them into one big multicolored work.
I’ll be sharing my process throughout this adventure here in this blog.
I’d love for you to join me. TWELVTY is open to everyone, and better yet, it’s free! Sign up for my newsletter to find out more and get your free TWELVTY guide ebook.
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In my latest newsletter (going out later today) I share more about getting through un-creativity; what’s on the horizon for my next projects. And my latest flip-though video.
If you haven’t already, hop aboard the news-list here 🙂
Gradually I’m recombobulating after an unplanned summer-long sabbatical.
It all began with slipping away from social media, from blogging, and from the digital mayhem of click-baity distraction.
Then it spilled over into my creative practice, as I set down one project after another, anything creative that felt more should do than a giddy-excited-to-play.
It was the accumulated exhaustion of someone who’s spent a life time rushing and bustling and keeping too may plans spinning. Driven by poorly reasoned logic, no time to question my motives.
The only kind of making that lit up my heart was sewing, so that’s what I did, day after day, until the lull passed.
This is a wall hanging I began making years ago. On and off I’ll pick it up, spend my spare time stitching away, then it goes back in a box and sits for a while longer.
This was the only creative outlet that’s sparked anything in my soul of late.
Then, as suddenly as all the ideas dried up, one at a time, they began to sneak back.
Beginning with some new textile projects and spilling into a bundle of new art journal/sketchbook ideas, it feels like that part of me that thrives on making and doing has come back to life. As the un-hibernation process is picking up momentum, one idea is feeding into the next. I’m feeling more like me again.
art journal spread inspired by Alisa Burke
A little bit of what’s on my creative horizon!
In my latest newsletter (going out later today) I share more about getting through these lumpy few weeks of un-creativity; what’s on the horizon for my next projects. And you can be first to see my latest flip-though video of the project that set off all that’s going on now. Yay!
If you haven’t already, hop aboard the news-list here
I posted this image on Instagram recently, with the question: what color do you think this painting is? (clue: it isn’t actually grey!)
I posted this image on Instagram recently, with the question: what color do you think this painting is?(clue: it isn’t actually grey!)
At the time I write this to you, no one has guessed. So the challenge remains open: what color do you think it is?
Comment below, or email me your answer, the first person who guesses the color wins ahalf price place in my upcoming color adventure: TWELVTY 2018.Just £48 instead of the usual £97. Lawks!!
Which leads me to the next part of this post, speaking of color adventures:
a Gift for you: “TWELVTY XTRA”
While I was busy in researching color for the TWELVTY program, there was one aspect I came back to with each color, with increasing fascination, the way that colors behave (and misbehave) in each other’s company.
It really lit up my imagination.
So much so, I wanted to share some of the magic I uncovered with you. So I’ve created a mini ecourse all about color combining.
What happens:
Every day for one week I’ll send a chapter in the story of color combining.
The story is illustrated with paintings created using only 2 or 3 colors.
I’m looking at combinations you might not have explored before, to open up new ideas.
We’ll investigate the mood and memories attached to the colors.
I’ll show you exclusive video demonstrations of the process I use to make them.
I’ll share some insights I picked up along the way in my adventure around the color wheel.
All this is for FREE – for YOU!
Whatever your creative field – be it painting, art journaling, photography – home decoration or cake decoration – digital, textile, film or fashion – there’s something here for you!
Sign up here and I’ll email you as soon as it’s available later in the month:
Your email is utterly safe to me. I’ll send you a little welcome note with my ebook all about color. You’re welcome to unsubscribe at any time.
Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories, and it’s everywhere! As we tune our eyes in to notice it, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.
What is TWELVTY?
TWEVLTY is an online program all about color.
How much is it to join TWELVTY?
A full year of color is yours for just £97, or 3 monthly instalments of £33. Click here to Join now!
What happens in TWELVTY?
You learn about the meaning of color – its application and use, the meanings and symbolism each color has throughout history and around the world.
You get access to a wealth of knowledge and resources to enhance your use of color in your own creative practice.
Color is an integral part of creativity, influencing our moods and emotions, linked with our memories, and it’s everywhere!As we tune our eyes in to notice it,life becomes brighter and more vibrant.
Who is TWELVTY for?
Whatever your creative interests, as a hobbyist, a professional, an educator, if you’re curious to learn, the resources in TWELVTY are sure to enrich your understanding of color. In each step around the color wheel, we dive deep into each color’s meanings, how it’s used, and how it features in our lives.
What is the color wheel?
The color wheel is the roadmap to our adventure
We’re using the 12 part color wheel, it looks like this:
Comprising: 3 Primaries:Yellow, Red & Blue; 3 Secondaries:Green, Violet & Orange. (Made by mixing each pair of primaries) 6 Tertiaries:Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, Red-Orange & Yellow-Orange. (Made by mixing a primary with it’s nearest neighbouring secondary)
Primary & Secondary colors are separated by the ‘in between’ Tertiary colors
The tertiary colors, the in-between colors, sit in between the primary & secondary from which they are made. The difference between these and their neighbours is subtle – they are not quite one or the other.
Some choose to skip over the tertiary colors and just use the primary and secondary colors for a simplified TWELVTY.
You can opt to take a rest in between to spend some extra time in Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Red & Orange, and still have all the resources for the tertiaries to revisit any time.
How long is the program? How much time will I need?
The program runs throughout 2018.
Beginning in January with a bird’s eye view of the color wheel to see the territory we’re going to explore, then preparing for the adventure ahead.
The steps around the color wheel take place March through November.Starting with Yellow we step around the wheel one color at a time, spending 3 weeks in each color. In the first part of each segment I share the resources I’ve gathered together for you; the second part is all about the creative process, working in just this one color!
For each 3-week section you’ll want to allow an hour or two to read and look through the ebook, guides and resources in the first part. In the second part you’ll need the about the same amount of time to review the process material. How much time you spend in the creative section is your call.
Of course,the more you put in, the more you get out, as with any learning experience.
My aim is to make TWELVTY as much fun as possible, I’ll give you prompts and ideas to play with at the start of the color, we have photo challenges and games to play through the year as well, so there will always be plenty to choose from.
There’s a guided project that runs throughout the program. In each segment I’ll show you what I’m making, playing with different mixed media techniques including collage, mark making with paint, print, ink, drawing and doodles, some stitching and textile elements, we might even dye some paper! Lots of ideas!
At the end of the individual color segments we have time to reflect on the process, consolidate what we’ve made and share what we’ve learned through the experience.
What do we make?
Ooh! I’m glad you asked – this is the new exciting part 😀 We’re making a 3D color wheel!
What’s a 3D color wheel? What’s it for?
Well, I don’t want to totally give the game away, but if you’ve seen my previous 12 color art journals, you’ll know they get decidedly chunky with all the lovely layers of mixed media and collage and stuff.
That’s what inspired the idea. It’s a bit like a mini art journal. But much more fun!
Once it’s complete you can use this to inspire color combinations for future works of art. It’s a place to explore new techniques, so you can refer back to it when you want to find ideas for a new project. You can keep going back and adding to it too!
I keep my 12 color art journals open by my work table in the studio as a source of reference all the time. They’re both jammed full of all kinds of mixed media, doodles, collage, and experimental techniques and a constant source of ideas to springboard into new projects from. What we’re gonna make in TWELVTY 2018 is like this – only WAY BETTER!!!
What if I don’t want to make a color wheel?
Totally cool. (Although you might change your mind when you see what fun we’re having…)
Seriously, you’ll get loads from TWELVTY without making a color wheel. The core reason for TWELVTY is to have fun, and bring more color into the world around us. If you only used the ebook and online resources, joined the photo challenges, or just hang in the background watching what other folks are making, you’ll still get really good value from the program.
The way TWELVTY is designed, you can take any of the elements and fit them into your own creative practice. You might choose to take on a totally different 12 color project instead!
What else could I do in TWELVTY?
Well, you might like to make a regular art journal, with single coloured spreads for each segment. I’ve done this twice already (I’ll share my pages & the process from each as we go along – but I’ve got flip throughs in my youTubes over here).I love both these books! A few of the TWELVTY 2017 group have made art journals and they are all fabulous.
You might want to do something totally different and make a 12 part body of art work featuring each color. This could be
A series of photographs or drawings.
You could make a vlog about each color, showing where you find it and how it makes you feel.
You could write a poem inspired by thoughts on each color
Or paint a landscape through the seasons and times of day showing color changes.
Really – anything you can do in color you can do in TWELVTY! how about cake decorating? I’d love if you made 12 cakes through TWELVTY, iced them in the 12 colors and showed us photos!
This year we had a Twelveteer make a prayer flag in each color, and these are just awesome! I strongly encourage you to find a process you want to explore in different colors 🙂
Color is everywhere: the ONLY LIMIT is your imagination!
What do I need for TWELVTY?
Is there an art supplies list? Do I have to get loads of new stuff?
I’m a big proponent of using what we already have.Firstly so we don’t get freaked out with the expense/bewildering variety of art supplies. Mainly cos I like the way it stretches the creative muscle to be inventive.
I use a range of different paints and media which I’ve spent a lifetime collecting. I also use a load of recycled and reclaimed materials – scraps of paper and card, old magazines and junk mail, offcuts of fabric and trimmings… packaging I don’t want to end up in landfill often winds its way into my art!
There’ll be a comprehensive list of suggestedsupplies in the welcome pack, and I’ll explain how we’ll use them so you can make up your mind if you need to get anything extra.
The minimumyou’ll need to play along is some paper, and the three primary colors: yellow, red & blue. This can be acrylic paint, craft paint, poster paint, watercolor, or it could be crayons or markers, or coloured paper to collage, any combination of these.
(That said, if you’re asking permission to run around the art store squealing Woohoo – new project – gotta get me all the new colors!! And it’s not gonna get you in trouble with the grown ups in your life or your bank account then go right ahead!)
Is there anything else you’re still wondering about? In my giddy excitement did I forget to answer your question? Comment below or message me if there’s anything else you’d like to know!
To be first to hear about my colorful antics and get discounts on courses like TWELVTY , just hop onto my email list right here.
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
Your email is utterly safe to me. I’ll sing it to sleep when it lands with me, and bring it tea when it wakes up.
What’s really beautiful, is within the group of creatives brought together by TWELVTY, there’s such a diversity of talent and such a fabulous range of expression. When you take a subject like color which can be applied to most every medium, it translates such variety of techniques and media and manifests a constant source of inspiration
The What & The Where
Throughout 2017 I’ve been running an online program called TWELVTYin which we explore the color wheel one month and one color at a time. It’s been a fantastic journey (which isn’t over yet: we still have orange-yellow left to explore)
What’s really beautiful, is within the group of creatives brought together by TWELVTY, there’s such a diversity of talent & range of expression.
From painters to weavers, textile artists, photographers, mixed media creatives and writers. Between us we are much more than the sum of our parts.
When you take a subject like color which can be applied to most every medium, it translates such variety of techniques and media and manifests a constant source of inspiration:
I see that embroidery and it inspires an idea for a photo series;I see this painting and the idea for a video starts to come to life. The drawing which tells a story, inspires a song or a poem.
Ideas are cross-pollinating all over the place!!
When I set out on this adventure at the beginning of the year, I really thought it would be a one-off. But so much has surprised me along the way.TWELVTY soon began to gather momentum, to take on an energy of its own, and it seems like it doesn’t want to end here.
So I’ve made a couple of little tweaks, and I’m excited to present:
TWELVTY 2018: What’s new?
The structure has shifted: Instead of each month dedicated solely to one color, we are quickening the pace of the color steps in order to spend a little more time exploring the territory for our color adventure.
This gives us time at the start of the year to get to take a bird’s eye view, get to know the the color wheel, and gather our colors together.
Then we’ll take each segment of the color wheel in a three week block.
At the end of our journey there will be space to consolidate what we’ve learned, and bring it all together.
As well as all the resources I’ve gathered and curated for each color through this first year of TWELVTY, I’m also planning something new!
Something colorful and fun! Something that will bring joy to your inner kid (or actual kids – this could be a family project)
Each color segment will have a step-by-step illustrated guide where I show you ways I like to play with mixed media. You can use these for inspiration, or your own techniques, as in each color we are going to add to our year long project:To create a 3-D Color Wheel!
This will be a resource you can come back to again and again when you ‘re looking for ideas in your creative practice.
I’ve made the decision to close new registrations at the end of February because TWELVTY has really taken on a momentum far bigger than I expected! It would simply be too much to catch up on beyond this point.
Will TWELVTY run again next year?
Right now, I really don’t think so, it’s taken over so much of my time and become all-encompassing. I love it – but next year I have other adventures lined up so it certainly won’t repeat this same format. It’s a real now or never!
Sign up todayand you’ll get instant access to everything we’ve done so far. I really look forward to exploring the rest of the color wheel with you!
If TWELVTY isn’t your thing, but you’d like to be first to hear about my colorful doings and things, hop on my mailing list here
(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it raisins & chocolate, maybe sing to it for a while, that sort of thing.)
Things have been weighing heavily around here lately, you noticed that too? Even when you do your best not to get dragged down there’s still an underlying sense of being, at best, completely unsettled.
As I’ve shared here before, if it weren’t for my art practice I think I would have sunk many times.
A few days ago I found myself re-watching this TED-X talk by artist Callie Curry, aka Swoon. She’s a real inspiration to me. I love her style, but I most especially love her – her persona – her magic.
She talks about how she created the Heliotrope Foundation. After the 2010 earthquake she was compelled to find a way to help the people of Haiti. But how? in her words, ‘I’m just an artist’.If you watch the talk you’ll see how she brings hope and light and practical support in a way that only the ingenuity of an artist could have thought up. And she continues to spread this magic around the world.
“I’m just an artist”
Me too. I’m just an artist too… and one who really wants to bring the light into other folks lives in the way that creativity has done for me. But how?
How can I shine light in these turbulent times?
I think about what has helped me in the past, where I’ve turned when I felt like I might just crumple, and that’s what I can share.
My sanctuary has always been in my art. Not just the act of creating – I don’t always have the time, the motivation, the space or the will. But I can always see it. I can see the patterns and the colors and the wonder. It’s a skill I’ve honed over the years and as each year passes I get more from it – it works better – it’s more reliably everywhere I look.
This is what I want to share, and this is my intention with the program I’m starting in the new year. I want to show the way I see, to share the sanctuary I carved out n my imagination and is with me everywhere I go.
I’m gathering a tribe who will all be contributing, in art, in ideas, in insights, and between us we’re going to make magic happen.
It doesn’t matter if you think yourself ‘arty’ or not – in fact the more diverse the tribe is, the more we all benefit, everyone brings their own magic to add to the mix.
Don’t feel like you have magic to bring? Let me prove you wrong!
If you want to find out more, read more here. Any questions – comment below or send a message on my site. I’d love to have you join us.
It seems like moments ago I was telling you about the launch of TWELVTY. It feels like just a day or so since the ideas began to come together and I started putting this program together, but in fact that’s just another instance of time being tricksy with us.
So I’m just putting this out there – if you have haven’t yet signed up and are planning to, there’s just about 11 hours to catch the Special Deal whereby you get 2 months FREE.
No heavy sales pitch: I genuinely don’t want you to miss out. For real.
It’s only £12 a month. [at the time of posting that’s close to $15 USD] That’s a bit less than £3 a week, which in the big scheme of modern expenses doesn’t buy a lot of ‘stuff’. Maybe a fancy coffee, but probably not the slice of cake to go with it 😦
As a special gift to you, I’m giving two of these months to you for no charge when you sign up this week. £24 off the whole year. Now that would buy a substantial amount of cake. (Don’t eat it all at once though)
With TWELVTY you get to join a tribe of like minded creatives and explore the way color appears in our lives. We’re going to look at ways to play with color and integrate it in our art. We’re going to have a lot of fun. Find out more HERE
I was telling you yester-post how I’d reached a crossroads in my reimaginings. Here’s the thing:
A thing with which you’ll be familiar if the kind of art you make has the option to re-wind time….
Merrily trotting along to a certain point and Save;
Turn down a figurative side road,
Do more stuff,
Have an adventure.
….Andalso
Be back at that same junction, and go a different route, and have a different adventure – with a whole new cast of characters – and a uniquely new plot.
It’s like choosing between the many-worlds of quantum mechanics.
Now that I’ve dwelt on this a little while I like the idea of a Repeating Five-ness by making each episode of Take Five venture off in Five wildly different outcomes. Yay! Five times the fun!
But I digress. That comes after this:
This is where I’d value your opinion.
I know you’ll understand, as an artist, the hardest part is recognising that final tweak before you call a job jobbed and comfortably move on. Leaving it be. (I thought I was there.)
I really did.
The last change – IDK – do I like V1 or V2? I like them both. Which do I like more? The more I look, the less I know.
So it’s over to you guys…
Version 1:
Version 2:
…and a bit of detail from both. Just in case that helps any.
Please help me choose before monkey-mind talks me into looking for versions 3 through 48. (She’s very persuasive…!)
Clothing that’s not quite wearable any more, fabric scraps and snippets, material I’ve dyed, painted, embroidered, cut up and sewn up and all the projects and garments that haven’t quite made it, that haven’t quite played out, but they’re still lingering. Then there’s the trimmings and buttons and beads, the threads, the wools, the fibres….
Lingering, for the longest time.
For what?
Like limbo.
I just needed the nudge to know what for.
And the nudge happened recently! I’ll tell you more soon, but there’s something enormous in the making: a turning point in my days, a purpose I couldn’t see until so suddenly it showed up to me. It keeps showing up in my dreams, and I’m waking up in a full on spin of ideas.
And they are manifesting as these bizarre little creatures.
Well, I don’t want to totally give the game away, but if you’ve seen my previous 
Mixy's Art Blog 