Creating interesting backgrounds is an important part of mixed media art, but buying art supplies can get expensive. Making everyday materials into cool looking mixed media art backgrounds is much more fun! In order to choose the best mixed media background materials, start by choosing a theme for your artwork. Are you going for rustic or modern? The following are some ideas of mixed media backgrounds to get you started.
Shelf Liner
You can get really cheap shelf liner from a dollar store, the quality is not important as you’ll be using it as background for your mixed media art anyway. You can use it as it is, or spray paint it to achieve interesting cool effects in colors to suit your theme.
Aluminum Foil
Aluminum foil is incredibly versatile. You can color it with nail polish or alcohol markers, you can wrinkle and smooth it to add texture, you can even crumble it to create very textured 3D backgrounds. And most kitchens will have a roll or two of cheap aluminum foil you don’t want to use for cooking.
Paper Napkins
You can created amazing mixed media backgrounds with paper napkins. They are cheap, come in a huge variety of colors and patterns and you can either decoupage them or use them straight as part of your mixed media artwork.
Crackle Painting
Looking for an aged, rustic effect for your art? You can easily create a mixed media background using Crackle Painting. This is a very useful mixed media technique. First, paint a surface in your desired color. Then apply a coat of crackling medium (or white glue, of you don’t have crackling medium) once it’s dry. Then cover that coat with a paint that contrasts with your first layer, and you’ll have a rugged, colourful background ready to go.
Print Pages
Old newspapers, or even old books or songbooks you can buy at a garage sale make for beautiful mixed media backgrounds. You can process them further by staining them (use tea to give an aged feeling) or painting over them with watercolor paint. Watercolor paint fades the ink enough to make it abstract but it’s still possible to see that there is writing on that background, creating really beautiful effects for your mixed media backgrounds.
You can even buy ready made background books such as this one to use in your mixed media artwork.
- Bondi, Mimi (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 102 Pages - 12/18/2016 (Publication Date) - Aqua Blue Publishing (Publisher)
Cardboard
If you remove the top layer of a cardboard piece you are left with the corrugated lines, which make for a rugged, highly textured background.
Modelling Paste
You can use modelling paste to create highly textured backgrounds to suit any and all themes. And you don’t even need to buy it, you can make your own modelling paste if you are feeling crafty. You can even use baby powder for a cheap modelling paste that can be used for mixed media artwork and backgrounds. It can be a bit messy though.
You can use reusable stencils to create shapes and complex patterns using this modelling paste, which you can paint afterwards.
- 13 PAPER STENCILS - Create mixed media art with laser cut paper stencils. This set consists of 13 6.5"x 6.5" mandala themed stencils perfect to create a variety of colorful mandalas
- REUSABLE PAPER STENCILS - Easy to wipe clean after use. Treat with Glaze to further extend the life of your Mixed Media stencils!
- MIXED MEDIA STENCILS - Use with Gelatos and Textural Accents to add unique designs to your mixed media art projects. Play with colors and add life to your artwork.
- WORKS WITH A VARIETY OF MEDIUMS - Use mixed media stencils with all of your favorite Faber-Castell art products such as Gelatos Colors, Pitt Artist Pens, Textural Accents and more!
- FABER-CASTELL QUALITY ART MATERIALS - See your artwork come to life with the absolute best quality art materials. Faber-Castell has produced quality art materials since 1761.
Old Books
You can upcycle old books and create amazing mixed media art on their pages. You will need to glue several pages together to create a thick enough background for your art, but the end result can be an awesome 3D mixed art sketchbook that uses some of the book pages with cool headings or illustrations.
Gift Paper
Similar to napkins, you can use wrapping or gift paper glued together as background for your mixed media art. Waxed paper and metallic papers can be combined to create different textures within your artwork.
Cloth
Highly textured cloth, such as burlap or rough cotton, can be used as background for mixed art and upcycled into rustic mixed media artwork. Denim and muslin also are thick enough to allow for paint but give a more modern effect. Take a look at your discarded clothes basket and see what you can make from it.
As you can see, in terms of mixed media backgrounds the sky is the limit. Almost any material can be used as long as it’s strong enough to work with. Techniques such as decoupage allow you to use the patterns and textures of softer materials to frame your art.
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