Step by Step Mixed Media Art Demonstration

About Sandrine Pelissier

I grew up in France but have been living in Canada for the last 12 years, I am currently located in North Vancouver and work from a studio on Pemberton Avenue.

Watercolor is my medium of choice because of the unique way it allows me to render light. The transparency of this medium can make it look like the painting is lit from behind and the light is shining through the paper In my portraits, I like to tell stories about the people around me. I am very interested in childhood fantasy or fairy tales (I wish it would snow Flowers, Hair Balloon, Georgia, the Spanish dress and the Eclectus Parrot). I also like to induce a dialogue with the viewer in some paintings dealing more with introspection and mood (Mixed, In the studio).

Those portraits are not about likeness or knowing the people that are being painted, as I see my models as actors in a movie, they are the faces that will allow me to tell a story or to show emotions. Those faces are a source of endless fascination and I find the subtlety that can be achieved with watercolor well suited to the complexity of the human face.

My technique involves the accumulation of many transparent layers of watercolor. Then I like to incorporate mixed media in the background, work sometimes with some contouring. I also sometimes like to add some drawing on top of the painting or some graphic elements…

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Road Trip, Acrylic and mixed media on canvas and prezi presentations

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Road Trip: mixed media on canvas

This is my latest painting on canvas, still working from a series of pictures I took during our summer road trip to Alberta.

I published some of those pictures in a Red Bubble Gallery here.

For this painting I used mostly Acrylic and pastels, with a bit of alcohol, medium, fixative, crayon, pencil.

This is the picture I worked from. The colors are pretty muted but I liked the composition with the posts and mountains . I also liked how the road gets you in the picture.

I started with a yellow-orange underpainting in acrylic, then made a rough drawing with a white crayon.

Here I started applying blocks of colors. The drawing in wax crayon act as a resist and stays visible under the layers of Acrylic paint.

I add a layer of white acrylic on the road but find it too heavy.

So I spray lightly with water

And apply a layer of paper towel on the still wet paint.

When I take off the paper towel, I have nice patterns on the road.

I add some layers of diluted white liquid acrylic to the sky area, in a watercolor manner. Spraying Alcohol to add some texture.

Adding more colored layers to the fields and background mountains.

Scrubbing of some paint with a sponge.

Adding more acrylic layers, and painting the poles. I am drawing the wires with a pen.

I now spray the painting with water and will scrub off paint again to add more depth and complexity to my colors

I now wait for the paint to dry and now work with dry pastels. The advantage is that I can try different colors and wash them away if I don’t like it.

Adjusting the final details with acrylic, once the pastel has been fixed with spray fixative.