mixed media portraits

Octopus Hair! New online workshop!

Octopus Hair Art Nouveau
| Sal Scheibe

More mixed media madness from me. I love tossing everything on my table top into an art piece. It’s always so much fun to create layers over layers and see what you end up with. It’s always a surprise to see what comes through in the end. I wish the frame around the girl showed properly though. It’s a bright and shiny gold acrylic actually but that’s so hard to see on a scan. Does anyone have any suggestions for scanning shiny? I haven’t had much luck yet.

I painted Octopus Hair while re-watching the first season of True Detective, hence a bit of a dark mood showing through. What a brilliant show that was, truly. I love the banter between Rust and Marty, so perfect. I had started to watch season two when it first came out but it didn’t quite catch me at the time. I’m going to give it a new whirl over the coming weeks. I’m hoping season three will be as amazing as the first season. I can’t wait to watch it!

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I’d be creating a new workshop in the fall and I do have some details to share finally. If you’re interested, just sign up for my newsletter and all of the info will come to you in the next few weeks. But for now, here’s a quick overview!

 

Online Art Workshop, Coming Fall of 2018

Joy & Sorrow: A Moody Mixed Media Exploration

An expressive and insightful journey exploring moody concepts in mixed media art. You will learn how to make your portraits come alive with feeling and emotion; to share the light and to explore the dark. We’ll cover simplifying techniques for facial expression to help you bring a more expressive quality into your art. We’ll explore the world of emotional concepts and how to take that spark of an idea and translate it into a finished piece.

  • Facial Expressions: Creating emotions in your portraits
  • Telling a story with your art: All about concepts and ideas, beyond the portrait
  • Setting a mood with paint and paper
  • Putting it all together: Mixed media mood exploration paintings

 

Love Joy mixed media and a bit of dark too

Love Joy Mixed Media
| Sal Scheibe

I finished this painting this morning and I think it might possibly be the happiest thing I’ve ever painted! I love a good rainbow and as much colour as possible and my mood has been more positive the past few days. It all makes for happy art and happy art is good.  Serendipitously, I found the word LOVE on her shirt in the patterned paper.  I love little things like that.

Below is a new page in one of my art journals. I guess this was a dark mood day? No, no guessing… I know it was. Donald Trump probably did something evil and stupid again while I was painting.  I’m surprised all of my art isn’t dark and black lately.  This one is watercolor and coloured pencil over a book page with lyrics by one of my faves, The Tear Garden.

 

SLScheibe_MyFlavour

 

Sorry for politics in the art blog but if you’re a Donald Trump fan, this might not be the blog for you 🙂

 

Joy & Love Mantra: Strumpet Stencils Walk-Through

Strumpet Stencils Design Team
| Sal Scheibe

Strumpet Stencils Used:

 

The Strumpet Stencil design team is doing a fun project this summer – round robin journals! Woo! I received Nolwenn’s lovely journal a couple of weeks ago and decided to use it for this month’s walk-through. Nolwenn had already stenciled some awesome backgrounds onto her journal pages and I wanted to keep the shape theme. She used the mini moley triangle stencil as you can see in the first image below and I plonked my pencil drawing over top.

I used watercolors for the next step because I wanted Nolwenn’s background art to show through the skin and hair tones so it was just a light wash here. To give the face depth, I used Copic markers over top for the shadows and highlights. Any regular markers will be fine because they’re not super opaque for the most part over top of acrylics.

Strumpet Stencils JOY art walk-through

 

To create the background, I used a watered down acrylic wash in pink and yellow so Nolwenn’s background could still peek out from behind. Once I added the crop circle stencil, I used another light pink wash over top to blend it in with the background. Washi tape on top! I love that stuff. And a few more mini moley stencils with the crosses or plus signs – however you see it.

I used Posca Paint Pens for the lettering. I seriously LOVE these pens. They’re pretty brilliant and will paint over top of most surfaces. They’re fabulous for painting over acrylics. I also used the Posca Paint Pens for the facial outlines and the little circles I added to the background. I sprayed with a fixative and then used regular ink pens for facial features.

Strumpet Stencils JOY art walk-through

Nowenn’s journal theme was Mantras and I don’t really have one. But I do like these words a lot.

Strumpet Stencils store on Etsy! Use STRUMPETSAL coupon code for a discount. For more tutorials and stencil vids, please check out the Strumpet Stencils blog.

Butterflies & Tomatoes

Butterfly Girl
| Sal Scheibe

The weather is pretty weird lately. I’m in Canada and normally at this time of the year, it’s starting to chill quite a bit. But this year we had a crazy warm hot spell at the end of September and my tomato plants have re-blossomed! It’s way too late in the season for them to develop into fruit but it was a valiant effort. Makes me sad too – hot weather this late in the year. On the brighter side, my fall gardening is mostly done now. I only have to rake… like 50 times. I am surrounded by trees.

Above is a mixed media piece from my new art journal. I was feeling the warm autumn colours and wanted to go with something cheerful and fun before the snow starts. Winter is coming. OMG. I had to say that. It’s my GoT addiction showing. I’ll work on a few snow ladies soon. I’m ready for the white stuff to appear!

I’m going to have a whole new set of prints soon for my art store. And a new batch of original ACEOs and probably some postcard sized art too. I’ll be uploading and announcing some sales over the coming month or two!

Life Book 2017 Art

| Sal Scheibe

It’s been a few weeks since I posted art but I’ve been busy behind the scenes! So many new projects, new work and lots of fun in a year long workshop I signed up for, Life Book 2017 (pretty late, I know!). I’m loving it! I’m not at all used to this sort of workshop with all of the positive art talk. Most of my teachers have been the critical sort, LOL. And don’t get me wrong, I totally appreciated that approach since it made it easier for me to see my mistakes and learn from them. But I have to say, all of the love stuff is totally cool too. I can get into it!

Above is a whimsical girl, way outside of my style norm! But it was a lot of fun creating something in this cute style. And I love to say YES to things so we match. This lesson was by Tamara Laporte and it was lots of fun. Some interesting techniques and I’m happy with the result.

Below are my lessons with Effy Wild (branches up, roots down) and Leliani Joy (different art styles). I loved both of these lessons so much and am happy with how they turned out.