This week I have been enjoying a little break from oil painting and making some mixed media paintings. I thought you might be interested in seeing the process.

This pair of pictures is something I have been mulling around for a while. I like to begin with 140lb water color paper. I used Modge Podge to glue some random papers down for texture and then started layering the blue acrylic paint.

After the background was painted, I cut out and glued book pages into the octopus shapes I wanted.

After the shapes were laid out I painted them to look like the octopuses I had in mind.

To make the teapot and teacup I used a playing card and a found piece of Chinese paper.

And for the final touches I added an outline with India ink, found green paper for eyes, some bubbles and a little more shading.

I decided to give this little guy glasses and a nice smile.

This little octopus has a fish (from the encyclopedia) swimming by.

Hopefully you found this "step-by-step" interesting. I think the "Octopus Tea" pair would look great framed. If you are interested it will be on my ETSY page soon..

Thanks for reading, talk to you soon!

Beth