Anatomical Heart Grungy Mixed Media Painting Tutorial!

Hello... hello!

I wanted to do something fun, colorful and intuitive today.

First up, I gesso'd a piece of watercolor paper. (You can use canvas or whatever you like. Just brush the gesso on and let it dry.)

Then, I used a watery paintbrush to apply both "Payne's Grey" and "Blue Green Light" in DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics. Let it run and drip and dance on the page.

Then... the fun part. BUBBLE WRAP.

While the paint is still wet, just press the bubble wrap on it, then lift. As long as the paint is still wet, it should leave an imprint, like this!: 

My bubble wrap has been used numerous times as you can see. It still does the job pretty well. I just keep it in a container with some of my other stamps. 

Next up, I decided to let some Carbon Black fluid acrylic drip down the page. I always seem to enjoy the added element of the drips. 

Alright, so at this point I decided that the colors were just a little too bland for my liking. I wanted something bold! So once the drips had dried,I brushed on a layer of Primary Cyan DecoArt Media Mister. I say it a lot, but I really like to use these because they dry permanently. 

By brushing it on, instead of spraying -- you can control how transparent you want it to be. Here, I still wanted to be able to see my previous layers -- the drips, the bubble wrap, that green with the Payne's Grey. 

While the mister is drying, I mixed up some modeling paste and Americana multi-surface paint in "black tie"

The plan is to use a palette knife and a stencil to add some more texture!

It will look a little bit like this: 

The modeling paste will need some time to dry, so I set it aside and started sketching on an old book page. If you're not so into drawing you could stamp or stencil an image.

Once I had the drawing I liked, I cut it out of the page, and used some red and purple watercolor paint to add just a little bit of color to it. 

Then, I used matte medium to adhere this piece to the original painting. I added a thick layer of DecoArt Media crackle paste over the top for even MORE TEXTURE and added some more drips... this time, in red! 

White highlights are also a must... (I used a Sakura Gelly Roll pen in white for those. They allow me to get some fine lines, and they write over everything pretty well -- even the cracklepaste!)

(A closeup of that crackle gel... pretty amazing, eh?)

  That's it! I think it was fun to explore color and balance the brights with the darks. It's always a good time to bring out the modeling and crackle pastes and work intuitively as well. 

If you art along I hope you'll share your work below. I can't wait to see it!

Cheers,
Pan