“Lady and thing” Mixed media explorations
This was such a fun art making experience! I really let loose, and tried all kinds of media and techniques. I’ve been trying to get back into traditional media because I feel like my skills in that area have really atrophied over the years. I was really focusing all of my art making time into digital art, mostly because of less mess, and the space requirements are quite minimal for digital art. Living in a one bedroom apt. with another person, I really didn’t want to take up a lot of space with supplies. So most of art supplies were packed away for like 3 years or something? Now that we’re in a pretty large house with some roommates, I have a lot more space. We had an extra bedroom that we agreed to be used as a studio, so I can work on a lot more traditional art.
Making traditional art and making digital art are two different beasts, at least for me it is. I feel like digital art is easier. Or at least it’s easier to achieve a desired effect. I’ve really been liking the digital art I’ve been making over the last few years. I love using bright colors contrasted with black line work and a black background.
In an attempt to make my traditional art more like my digital art, I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting. I recently began using acrylic paints and acrylic mediums, and I’m having a much easier time re-creating my digital technique with it. I've found using lots of glazing techniques seems to work really well. Especially to unify colors. You can see this painting before I used a glaze of purple and blue ink to unify everything:
I also found that incorporating drawing media really helps to mimic the look of my digital art. I mostly used colored pencil here, but I’ve also been experimenting with using ink and paint in very dark colors for drawing on top of the painting to mimic the dark lines and backgrounds in my digital work.
I think that’s about all I wanted to mention about this piece. I’ve been experimenting a ton, so expect more posts like this one! Oh and if you have any questions or anything, feel free to ask in the comments below!
I have more process shots and a more in depth breakdown of how I made this painting on my patreon here: "Lady and Thing" Final plus breakdown!