How to paint brown skin tones using mixed media

Bring some diversity into your art journal!

Full video tutorial and step by step domo on painting brown skin tones using mixed media

Join me in my art studio as I show you how to paint brown skin tones using mixed media. This is a very simple, beginner friendly technique to paint brown skin tones on whimiscal portraits in your art journal.

One of the most frequent complaints I’ve heard within the art journal community is the lack of diversity in instructions on how to paint faces. Most teachers focus on painting fair skinned portraits, which leaves people of color feeling under-represented and unseen.

Added to that is the fact that getting the shading, highlights, and shadows on darker skin tones is often much more difficult than standard fair featured portraits.

While there are many different ways to approach painting darker skin tones, I’ve come up with a fairly easy way to paint brown skin tones using mixed media art supplies.

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Explore a neutral color palette in your art journal

Join me at the art table as we explore how to use a neutral color palette while painting a whimsical imaginary character in our art journals.

If you’ve seen my art, you know that I LOVE color — blues, pinks, oranges, bright greens — bring them on, please! But what you probably don’t know is that I absolutely love seeing artists who paint with a lot of white and with neutrals — there’s something so very striking about their art. I’ve never been able to successfully paint with a neutral color palette, though. Until last month, that is.

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How to paint an abstract owl: A step-by-step tutorial

Paint with me! Full video tutorial + a step-by-step demonstration.

Art journal tutorial - how to paint an abstracted whimsical owl

There’s something about owls — mysterious, wise creatures of the night with a gaze that can pierce your soul. I end up painting an owl at least once every year in my moon journal, which is where I create an intuitive ritualistic painting every new and full moon. For this tutorial, I’m showing you how to paint an abstracted whimsical owl. Gather your supplies, and let’s begin!

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Art journal with me: Whimsical figurative painting

Join me at the art table as I show you how to create a whimsical figurative painting in your art journal.

Grab your art journal, pull together some of your favorite acrylic paints, brushes, and a few other supplies {scroll down for the supply list} and get ready to create a sweet little whimsical figurative painting.

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Step-by-step intuitive abstract figurative art journaling page

Paint with me! Join me at my art table as I show you how to create an intuitive abstract figurative painting in your art journal.

Intuitive abstract figurative painting. Full video and step-by-step tutorial

If you’ve been around here for a hot minute, you know that I’m a diehard art journaler and that I absolutely love intuitive painting — especially figurative abstracts. I art journal almost every day, even if it’s just for 10 or 15 minutes. And painting intuitively perfectly suits the short bursts of time I spend in my art journal. I can leave things to dry, come back and look at my art journal spread with fresh eyes, and find stories within the layers of paints and marks.

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Abstract art journaling tutorial for beginners: Embrace the pause

Join me at the art table as I show you how to paint a textured mixed media intuitive abstract painting in your art journal

Abstract art journaling tutorial intuitive and expressive abstract painting for beginners

I had filmed this expressive abstract painting at the end of 2020, and forgot all about it! But it was fun to go back and listen to my musings on struggling with the pause between one year and the next as I created this abstract acrylic painting, and to see how much better I have become now, at the start of 2022, with embracing the pause!

Though I am working on a small piece of mixed media paper, you can easily follow along in your art journal.

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Art journal with me: Using stencils and masks in your art journal

Join me at the art table as I show you how to paint a beautifully layered art journal spread using stencils and masks.

Using stencils and masks in art journaling

Grab your art journal, pull out some of your favorite paints and mark making tools, gather together some stencils and masks from your stash, and let’s paint!

I’m painting in my handmade mixed media art journal, which is filled with a mix of starter pages that have some collage, stencils, and marks on them, and some plain pages where I can give my thoughts free reign.

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Mixed media collage tutorial: Whispers from the past

Join me at the art table as I show you how to create a mixed media collage in your art journal.

Mixed media collage tutorial

It can be difficult to figure out how to begin an art journal page, but if you think about it layer by layer, it gets easier – and more fun! It is the same with collage – the key is to take it one step at a time.

I start this page by playing with marks and color. Beginning in this way, allowing for the intuitive exploration of colors and marks, makes for a much more expressive and interesting piece of art.

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Art journal tutorial: Whimsical mixed media portrait

Join me in my art studio as I show you how to create a beautiful, whimsical portrait in your art journal – perfect for beginners and more experienced artists too!

Art journal tutorial for beginners whimsical mixed media portrait

There are days when you long for some gentleness. For softness and sweetness. For innocence and a certain je ne sais quoi.

On one such day, I pulled out my one-page shopping bag art journal, and decided to paint a sweet little flower girl. 

Some of the collage paper on the page inspired the idea for the flowers in her hair, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t create something like this in any art journal.

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Art journal with me: Intuitive figurative mixed media journal page

Grab your art journal, pull out some of your favourite paints, and come join me as I show you how to create an intuitive figurative mixed media art journal page!

I started this page with some burnt umber acrylic paint, because the husband mixed up a much larger batch for his project, and you can’t let good paint go to waste, right?

I started the page without any ideas or agenda. In fact, this is the first time that I really used raw umber, and I have to say that I love it much more than raw sienna.

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