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For artists and collectors sponsored by Intercal...your mohair supplier and Johnna's Mohair Store
I've got a question for the experienced painters among you.
Here 'tis:
Is there anything wrong with mixing paint types (oil, acrylic, watercolor), IF:
-- I allow each type to dry before adding to it
-- I properly prime a canvas surface with gesso first
-- I seal between layers with fixative and then afterward with fixative again?
I'm unschooled in painting, so I just don't know how these oil and water-based paints will mix over time, which is my concern.
Thanks for any tips you can offer!
Shelli I paint with acrylics. I like that you do not have to wait too much for it to dry. I am unschooled too but, I do think it will be fine, if like you said you sealed the paints in between. Which paint are you going to use first?
Sorry I can not be of any help.
Bear hugs.
Gladys
ToadBriaryou can do oil-based over water-based, with a fixative between or not. I might use a fixative for watercolor,
but no need for acrylic - that stuff is pretty tough & indelible when it's dried.
Don't do anything over oil except more oil, though. Ever. It will crackle/flake/peel/be a ungodly mess.
You will cry.
In fact, if I had a canvas with an oil painting on it that I wanted to recycle, I would only gesso it to use
for more oil paintings. Acrylic really never wants to be on top of oil. Even for wall paints, you use a lot of
primer between em!
have you tried the water-based oils? They are SO. COOL. hooray for not having to breathe turpentine stench!
Great tips; thank you. I do know how indelible acrylic can be esp. once heat set since I have ruined many a sons' shirt by washing before checking for paint spots. They just refuse to budge or come out!
Kim... so do you mean to say that you should never put anything over oil paint, regardless of canvas used? I absolutely have no training and haven't read up on this so I'm cheating by asking this of you directly. Just have never heard nor thought of that. I figured those Louvre-hung paintings were somehow sealed. Guess not...?
ToadBriarIt's not cheating, it's learning! 
The only thing to go over a finished oil painting is varnish. The oil paint will be dry to the touch in a matter of
days, but it takes the paint a matter of months to really cure. So six months to a year after finishing a painting,
it ought to get a coat or two of varnish over it. You put glass over a watercolor, but an oil painting is exposed to
the air. Oil naturally attracts dust, smoke, grime, etc from the environment - as anyone with a stove knows!
So after years & years, your painting will become dirty. To clean it, a restorer will strip off the (dirty) varnish,
revealing the pristine painting beneath, & then paint new clean varnish over.
If you don't wait a few months for the paint to cure before varnishing, the varnish will bond to the uncured paint &
not be removable after all. Depending on where the painting lives, you can wait a while to put varnish on. Sooner
is better if you smoke or you want to hang it over the fireplace or something like that.
The only surface I'd use oil paint on is primer or gesso of some sort. I was taught that oil paint will, over a long
period of time, eat away at the raw cotton of unprimed canvas, so the gesso provides a stable ground. *I do not know if the
thickness of the paint layer is relevant to the cotton getting disintegrated - a light wash versus a thick buttery smear?
I do not know if it is the mineral pigments or the linseed oil or what element of paint would do this. I also don't know if it
would eat away at protein fibers, or if, relatedly, the amount used to tint a bear would degrade the cotton backing
of mohair fabric or the hair itself. So I don't oil paint on my bears, even though it does look so awesome when people
do. I would love to hear from anyone who had oil paint wisdom AND bear-tinting-with-oil exp about this!)
One last thing about oil painting - your mantra will be Fat Over Lean! Thin your first layers with thinners
or other additives (stuff that speeds drying). As you do subsequent layers, use your oil additives like linseed or
whatever (stuff that slows drying = has more oil in it). Have your 'oiliest' (fattest) layers be the last ones. Painting
the 'lean' paint over the oily paint will make your painting liable to crackle. Which is why acrylic, which has no oils
in it at all, can't be used over oil paint
hope I was helpful!
Canna Bear PaintI'm no artist, but my mother is, so I ran your questions past her. Hope I am relaying this all correctly, somebody correct me if I'm messing something up!
Her response was that she couldn't provide a simple answer, because there was no simple answer, and something about books being written on the subject of mixed medias. Her recommendation is that, unless you want to make an in-depth study of the field, to stick with one media. However, there are certain tried-and-true mixed media combinations that are fairly common, such as an acrylic underpainting with oil on top, or a watercolor base with something like pastels on top. As far as fixative goes, it is not for use with oils and acrylics, but for art such as drawings and pastels, where the finished art can 'smudge' and fixative helps protect it.
Cheers,
Kelly
Tami Eveslage Original Teddy BearsKim and Kelly you both are a wealth of information!!! Thanks for sharing with Shelli and the rest of us! 
Wild Thyme OriginalsOh Shelli! If I may venture a guess... are you making a painted cloth doll? 
Oh I HOPE so! I'd love to see something like that from you... I bet she'd be fantastic! You know.... in the realm of painted cloth dolls, I'd drop Susan Fosnot a line for advice on this.
http://www.susanfosnotdolls.com/
She's very well schooled in what she does, and has studied the old Columbian cloth dolls extensively..... her approach is extremely "painterly."
It's kinda tricky because in the realm of "crafting" there is sort of an anything goes approach to mixing painting media... but as Kim pointed out.... in the art world there are really some strong dos and don'ts. When I worked in a high end art gallery, the owners were always kind of relieved when someone had stuck with the same media throughout a piece. It's just a whole lot more predictable. Not that there is anything inherantly wrong with mixed media... certainly not... but when it comes to how a piece will hold up over time, and whether it will look like it does today in 2 years, or in 20 years.... you just don't always know when someone has used mixed media.
Good luck with it Shell!
Kim Basta
I've been reading up on painted cloth dolls, and cloth dolls in general, for a few months now. I was already familiar with Susan Fosnot (whose jaw-dropping work I've mentioned here before, actually) and others who gesso and oil paint their dolls; Kim, great minds must think alike! 
I was thinking of making something different than what I've seen; more of a mixed-media art doll than a "pure" Colombian-type painted doll. I wasn't sure how I'd finish the doll but I had an idea in mind and not a lot of practice in using acrylic paints so I was hoping to get by with my familiar oils! But then I realized that some of the rough-hewn, primitive "wash" effects I wanted to get I probably couldn't get with oils anyway, and the contributions to this thread noodged me in the direction of choosing one paint type only, which I accented with just a smidge of Micron pen before sealing.
Here's the silly little poppet I finished just last night. This one's been in my head for a really long time and there are more like her still waiting to be born. It was great to exercise some non-teddy-bear chops on this little sprite!
Thanks so much to all of you for helping me get 'er done by sharing your tips & pointers! They really and truly helped enormously and I learned a whole lot, too. Love it!
This is FLEUR and her head is Paperclay; she has an alpaca body and primitive fabric stick arms and legs, with one painted cloth shoe, and another embellished with bead embroidery. I really stepped out of my familiar zone and used acrylic paints exclusively on her. It was a fun experiment and a great learning process. FYI, I did seal her lightly with a matte spray fixative, because she has tiny Micron pen accents on her lips and eyes and I wasn't sure how well they'd stay put over time over acrylics. I like how the finish turned out.
Now that's what I'm talking about!! Art Dolls!! Love all the textures you've used. Nicely done, girlie!
Warmest bear hugs, :hug:
Aleta
Why, thank you, Miss Aleta! It was great fun to make her. I liked the play of textures myself.
Got distracted a few minutes ago while posting photos of FLEUR with really sad news that our neighbor passed away on New Year's eve. 
Sorry for the interruption; I needed to recompose myself to get back on task.
Anyway... I did want to to include a closer shot of the painting on this doll -- the subject of this thread! -- which I intentionally tried to make streaky and primitive and fantasy-like to match her whimsical, other-worldly features. Acrylics worked great for this kind of smeary, aged wash effect; I just thinned the topmost, thinnest layers a bit with water first, after laying down a base of gesso primer and several coats of full-strength, flesh-colored paint.
I loved working with Paperclay for the first time; it's very easy to sculpt and takes sanding beautifully and it's incredibly lightweight but also, strong once dry. The only drawback with it is that I'm impatient and it's an air dry clay. I could have sped up the drying process by sticking the head in a low oven for a bit if I hadn't used a styrofoam core under the Paperclay, but styrofoam is totally toxic when heated and gives off noxious fumes, which I read everywhere, so I just had to wait out the drying time. Live and learn! Next time I'll build around a ball of tinfoil or something else.
WOW! Shelli your taletens never ends!! :clap: :clap: :clap: She is GREAT!It does make you smile, no matter what mood you are in! I am like you said, impatient and that is why I love acrylics and that you do not like what you see? Wipe and start again! I used to make soft sculptures dolls but, now I use acrilics on my paints. i do sometimes, when i do a bear portrait, used a M. pen around their eyes and it works fine with acrylics I do sealed with the acrylic varnish.
Sorry for your neighbor.
Bear hugs and Golly smiles.
Gladys 
Wild Thyme OriginalsShe's wonderful Shelli!!!!! 
:hug: It looks like you've been working with paper clay FOREVER! Really... I LOVE the wash effect that you've used... makes your little character look like something that jumped from off the pages of a fabulously illustrated fantasy book! I love that!
That's the one thing that drives me a bit mad with the air drying clays too... the wait!!! I tend to be an instant gratification type! If you ever DO decide to go the low temp oven route when trying to dry the clay... do be really careful.... sometimes you can get cracks in the clay if it dries TOO fast. Though.... it's SO easy to patch them in with wet clay, and let that dry and then sand.... although if you have to go through MORE steps, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of the oven dry in the first place! 
I really love her... she's great!
I'm sorry to hear about your neighbor. :hug:
Kim Basta
ToadBriarWOOOOW! Great - she's wonderful!!! I love paperclay - it makes a delightful surface. You use it like
a pro - she is a wonderful character! Great job with the acrylics, too - what kind did you use? I love
GOLDEN brand best - their fluid colors are awesome & have wonderful smoothness & pigment.
She's great, you ought to submit her to Art Doll Quarterly magazine!
Cincinnati, OhioGreat job, Shelli! I really love this doll!!!! Very creative!!!!!!!!! :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
THANK YOU for all the nice compliments! I'm so glad you like my silly little doll and that you don't think I'm a total hack with the sculpting thing. It helped, I think, that my concept was based on something that was supposed to be silly and pretend and lumpy and primitive, so the finer details that some dollmakers try to achieve in their features weren't even a part of my plan.
I did have a lot of lessons while making this little poppet. I enclosed a disk with cotter pin (just like I would have in a bear) in her neck clay and apparently, after the head was "done" drying, it was hard everywhere BUT inside the neck, so that whole joint tore off AFTER I had started painting the head, forcing me to punt a head connection for her, which required more than a little creative thinking at that point, I can tell you.
After some book study, I went with a traditional cloth doll standby joint, using a button (shank style) atop her head and threading faux sinew thru her head vertically and out her neck at the base. I then threaded the sinew into her body and thru a large wooden bead, tying it off several times. The wooden bead acted like the inner-body neck joint mechanism would have in a bear. Not my first choice or plan but it worked and meant that I didn't have to toss the head I had worked so hard to sculpt and waited days to dry! Obviously, I didn't give the thicker neck clay enough time to harden, which I couldn't tell from the outside because the outside was hard as rock. Again, live and learn. I had read to be "careful" not to do this very thing but because of my inexperience, I didn't realize that what I thought was "long enough" in terms of drying time just wasn't.
I did really enjoy learning acrylics, although the smooth blendability and working time of oils just continues to impress me. There's no rush with oils! Having said that, I liked that, as Gladys said, I could kinda "wet and wipe" anything I wanted to either remove, or soften. Once you stick oil paint on something, especially over wet oil paint, you're kinda stuck with it, eh? I purchased a little "beginner kit" with many tubes of paint from Michael's because the big tubes were a big investment and I wasn't sure which colors I'd use. The brand was Reeves. I know artists swear by Golden paints but I couldn't find a kit like this from Golden! I ended up using a fairly limited number of colors like Payne's Gray and of course white and black and brown (can't remember the name offhand) so it gives me better direction to buy higher quality paints next time around.
I'm sure I'll make more of these little darlings because I had just an absolute blast making her and, of course, the nice validation of your comments spurns me on to create more, too. Thank you again for that.
Kim, I'm touched that you'd suggest Art Doll Quarterly as something to even aim for with a first doll like this. You've made my week! :rose:
Last, thanks for the hugs about my neighbor. It was an incredible coincidence of fate, when I moved to Chico in 2000, that my next door neighbors were two of my parents' earliest friends from when they relocated to California from Wisconsin in the 1960's! I hadn't seen them in years, but just how many couples named Nora and Roman, from Scotland and Ukraine, ARE there in the world? So we hit it off right away and revisited some old holidays spent together in my youth. Nora died last year and Roman has had a hard run of things, struggling with cancer and mini strokes for over a year now. I think he's in a better place because I really, literally watched him "diminish" over the last year or so without Nora, with his ailing health. Still, it's a chunk of my history and childhood now gone, with his passing... so it hit me a bit harder than I thought it would. Your condolences are very much appreciated.
Tami Eveslage Original Teddy BearsShelli, she's absolutely wonderful! It's hard to believe this is your first attempt at sculpting with paperclay. (Isn't it FABULOUS stuff?!!) I know i'ts been said that your painting techniques are super, but it's worth saying again! Great job!!!
How exciting to see your first doll Shelli and she looks amazing! I'm very impressed! I've been fascinated by cloth dolls for a while but haven't yet ventured into making my own, so to read about your first steps into a new direction has been really interesting. Thank you so much for sharing them with us!
Rufnut Teddy'sShelli, she is cool, congratulations.
:redface: Really, just thank you so much for all your kind words. I'm kinda giddy that so many have taken the time to comment on this piece.
Past Time BearsYes, Shelli . . . your new direction in art is awesome! I so appreciate the fact that you're not afraid to "go there" and try something out of the ordinary. Your dolly is truly impressive. Way to go!
Love your new Avantar Shelli
Bear hugs and wide Golly smiles.
Gladys
She's so cool Shelli! Great work
I actually saw her face on your avatar this morning and went to your site looking for your dolls, glad I chanced on here here... can't wait to see more!
Sheila Leigh
Hi Shelli,
I love your new doll. I can't wait to see more. I'm "green with envy" over your lampworking. They look so pretty in your avatar. I have always wanted to make my own beads, but now the doctor has me on oxygen. I'm limited on what I can do. 
Here is one of my dolls that I made a few years ago. I'm planning on creating more sometime in the future.
p.s. Sorry that my picture is so big. I couldn't get it smaller. And I can see that there must be lint/dust on my scanner bed.
bear hugs,
Sheila
Sheila, that doll is gorgeous!
