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EnglishWhat mixed media painting ideas and techniques does paintingdemos.com show?
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paintingdemos.com (ARTiful) is a project-based art blog rather than a structured course, and its mixed media content clusters around a few repeatable habits: building a painting on top of an existing drawing or print, working on unusual papers, and adding pattern or texture with tools like Zentangle and Spirograph. If you want to see how these techniques are actually applied before trying them, the site's step-by-step posts and video tutorials are the practical entry point.
Mixed media and collage on a small scale
The site treats small format as a testing ground. Its "Mixed media and collage small paintings" post frames a few techniques you can reuse, and the collage thread continues through:
- Paper collage cards — how to make them as a standalone exercise
- Bauhaus-inspired postcards — applying a design idea to a small card format
- Hand-printed Christmas cards in black and gold — combining printmaking with a card format
- Mini 6-page books from one sheet of paper — a folding structure that gives you a small multi-page surface to fill
The through-line is that collage and mixed media are used to produce finished small objects (cards, books, postcards) rather than only studies.
Painting over existing drawings
One of the more distinctive ideas on the site is reworking drawings rather than starting from a blank surface:
- Painting over life drawings with mixed media — extending a figure drawing with paint and other media
- Organized chaos: reworking life drawings in mixed media — the same starting point pushed further
- Dry brushing for mixed media portraits — a specific brush technique applied to portrait work
- Cross hatching portraits — a linear technique that sits alongside the mixed media portrait posts
If you already draw from life, this is the lowest-friction way into the site's mixed media approach: you keep the drawing and change what you add on top.
Acrylic skins, masking fluid, and ink resist
Several posts cover techniques that change how paint behaves rather than what you paint:
- Painting with acrylic skins — using dried acrylic as a material in its own right
- 6 masking fluid tips — practical notes on a resist medium
- Ink resist technique — presented as a video tutorial
- Dry brushing — covered again in the portrait context above
These are technique posts, so expect the value to be in the demonstration rather than in a materials list.
Special papers: yupo, stone paper, and mounting
The site returns often to non-traditional surfaces:
| Surface | What the site covers |
|---|---|
| Yupo paper | Mounting it on board instead of framing; painting mixed media flowers on it |
| Stone paper | Painting with acrylics and alcohol-based inks |
| Watercolor paper | Adding pastels to make watercolor "pop"; applying Dorland's wax medium |
The yupo mounting post ("No more framing") is worth noting if you work on synthetic paper and have struggled with how to present it.
Pattern and texture: Zentangle and Spirograph
A recurring way the site enriches a painting is by adding drawn pattern over painted ground:
- Zentangle trees: Rainforest imagery and Zentangle forest painting step by step
- Adding Zentangle patterns to a watercolor and mixed media portrait: Selfie
- How to add Zentangle patterns to your paintings: In Kyoto
- Spirograph Tree — using a Spirograph for visual texture
- Watercolor postcards with Spirograph visual texture
The pattern is usually added after the painted or drawn layer, which means you can test the idea on any existing piece.
Flowers, still life, and negative painting
A large share of the mixed media posts are flower and still-life demonstrations that combine watercolor, acrylic, and ink:
- Painting flowers from imagination (including a step-by-step tutorial for the Anonymous Art Show)
- How to paint mixed media flowers on yupo paper: Orange Blossoms
- How to paint with acrylic inks and mixed media on canvas
- How to Paint Poppies and Roses in Watercolor and Mixed Media
- Painting flowers in mixed media from an abstract background
- Negative painting technique for a flower still life (two related posts)
The "abstract background" and "negative painting" posts are the two most transferable ideas here: both give you a way to start a flower painting without drawing the flower first.
How to use the site
Because the content is organized as individual posts and video tutorials rather than a curriculum, the practical approach is to pick one technique and one subject and combine them — for example, an abstract background plus negative painting, or a life drawing plus dry-brushed portrait work. The site's own framing is "get inspired to create," so treat the posts as demonstrations to adapt rather than lessons to complete in order.