Imaginary Characters: Mixed-Media Painting Techniques for Figures and Faces

by Karen O'Brien

Believe in magic, trust your intuition and find your individual artistic style!

In this book, you're the storyteller and the artist and you're on a quest to bring the soulful characters, mythical creatures and magical landscapes of your imagination to life through mixed-media art. You'll tap into your creative voice to fuse together lush dreamscapes, imaginary characters and found objects to build enchanting scenes, whimsical figures and expressive faces out of layers of acrylic, collage, watercolor and more. Learn the techniques necessary to create one-of-a-kind mixed-media masterpieces.

On your journey, you'll

   • Five skills to uncover your unique creative voice.
   • A magical drawing method. Easily find your characters' bodies and faces hidden in random shapes on painted backgrounds; it's like seeing animals in the clouds.
   • Imaginative warm-up exercises. Learn tips for creating a character reference library, secrets for drawing unusual faces, how to develop a color palette and advice on how to play with proportion, light and shading.
   • More than 30 exciting mixed-media projects using watercolor, vintage photographs, gouache, pencil, fabric, ink and much more to bring your imaginary characters to life on everything from woodblocks and paintings to fabric collages and paper dolls.
   • How to paint without a plan. Trust your intuition to create something out of nothing.
   • Inspirational quotes about creativity from famous artists and thinkers.
Embrace your curiosity and see what happens!

Genres: Art

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 26, 2015

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m drawn to O’Brien’s style of mixed media. It’s loose, funky and fun. This book has some very fun and somewhat unique techniques for creating characters, faces and mixed media in general. The projects are loosely defined but the steps are clearly noted. This is not a “paint a nearly identical piece” type of book. It’s more here are the basic ingredients now add the flavors that strike your fancy.

She gives you her two basic palettes that she uses which would be quite useful for someone just exploring mixed media and not wanting to buy 30 colors of ink, acrylic paint, watercolor, watercolor pencils, colored pencils, etc. Instead pick one or both the palettes (3 colors each) and get the colors in a few different mediums.

Adding this to my wish list for my studio library.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was good information on mixed media painting techniques, but there was also an awful lot of prose that I found unnecessary and boring.

I suppose if you are looking for something story-ish to inspire you all that pose might help.

I did like the exercises.

[Jana M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent step by step with photos and descriptions of techniques. Fun!

[Danielle Delahunty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had way more in it than could ever be tried. It’s like she wants to catch you up to her ability level so she can have a worthy adversary...I mean partner. Her fervor is infectious and her projects are fun...and expensive. I feel like you’d have to already be an artist to justify these supplies but then, what is the quote about...”let’s go get 100.00 worth of supplies and spend a week making a craft I can get for 4.00,” or something...

[Lanae · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second art book I read this week where I really liked the authors art and would be glad to have a book full of just their artwork but their actual instruction and tips part of the books just didn't work for me.

Maybe it's just me but I don't feel like this book is very useful. I do drool over how pretty the cover is though.