Building a Mixed-Media Piece From Ink, Paint, Poetry, and a Little Bit of Risk
There are some art projects that begin with a clear plan.
This was not really one of those.
This piece began with Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee—a poem I’ve always found both beautiful and deeply unsettling. It is romantic, mournful, obsessive, and just gothic enough to make you wonder whether anyone involved should perhaps have spoken to a therapist.
Naturally, I wanted to make art from it.
Rather than simply illustrating the poem, though, I wanted the finished piece to feel more like a memory of it: fragments of words, faces, color, and grief layered over one another until they become something that feels half remembered and half dreamed.
The result became this mixed-media portrait of Annabel Lee.
Starting With an Inkjet Transfer
One of the things I wanted to explore with this piece was an inkjet image transfer onto a gel plate.
Image transfers are one of my favorite techniques because they sit somewhere between control and complete artistic insubordination. You can prepare the image, choose the paper, position everything carefully, apply exactly the right amount of pressure…
…and the gel plate still gets a vote.
For the principal image transfer, I used an ordinary inkjet printer with PPD double-sided brochure paper. That particular combination works very well with my printer, although inkjet transfers are notoriously temperamental. Change the printer, ink, paper, humidity, moon phase, or apparently the emotional disposition of the gel plate, and the results can change considerably.
That uncertainty is part of what I enjoy about the process.
Once the inkjet image had transferred successfully, I used it as the foundation rather than the finished destination.
Building the Story in Layers
The text from Annabel Lee runs throughout the composition, but I intentionally did not want every word to remain perfectly readable.
Some passages disappear beneath paint. Others emerge through the imagery. Some are interrupted by the figures themselves.
That was deliberate.
When we remember someone—or something—we rarely remember it as one pristine, perfectly organized narrative. Certain moments remain incredibly sharp while others blur, overlap, or disappear altogether.
I wanted the poem to behave the same way.
The woman in magenta becomes almost ghostlike in the upper portion of the composition, while the figure below her is consumed by grief. Between them runs that intense band of blue: part sea, part separation, part visual interruption.
There is still recognizable imagery here, but the piece asks the viewer to fill in some of the story.
And I generally find the artwork I return to most often does exactly that.
Mixing Inkjet Transfer, Laser Imagery, and Reverse Painting
Although the initial image-transfer, adapted from a photo by Daniil, demonstration uses an inkjet print, the finished artwork isn’t limited to a single technique.
Additional imagery was created using laser-printed elements, and I built the composition through layers of acrylic paint, image transfer, masking, and reverse painting directly on the gel plate.
Because much of the painting happens from the back of the eventual print, you have to work somewhat backward.
Which is an excellent arrangement for anyone who has ever looked at normal painting and thought, This really isn’t complicated enough.
The final layers were pulled onto wet-strengthened teabag paper. I love using this material because it is remarkably thin and delicate while still being strong enough to survive the process.
That thinness also allows the different visual layers to retain a slightly translucent, almost fragile quality that felt especially appropriate for this particular subject.
Watching the Piece Come Together
I filmed the process while creating the artwork, including the inkjet transfer itself, the additional layering, the reverse painting, and the final pull from the gel plate.
If you’re interested in the technique—or you simply enjoy watching an art project hover periodically between this might actually work and what have I done?—you can watch the full process below.
The video also became an opportunity for me to show the inkjet-transfer method step by step, including the paper I use, how I prepare the image, how much pressure I apply, and some of the things I’ve learned through trial, error, and the occasional sacrificial sheet of brochure paper.
The Finished Annabel Lee
What I like most about the finished piece is that you don’t have to know every technical step behind it for the image to work.
From across the room, you first see the color: the blue cutting through the composition, the magenta portrait above it, the grieving figure below.
Then you begin to notice Poe’s words running throughout the piece.
Then individual fragments become readable.
Then the figures start interacting with the text.
It rewards getting closer.
That is something I increasingly want from the original artwork I create. I don’t want a piece to reveal absolutely everything in the first three seconds. I want there to be something else waiting when someone stops and spends a little more time with it.
And perhaps that is especially fitting for Annabel Lee.
It’s a work about memory, love, loss, and the stories we continue telling ourselves long after the moment itself has passed.
This is my interpretation of that story.
Not a literal illustration.
More like something left behind by it.
Interested in this piece?
I create my mixed-media work individually rather than as mass-produced decoration, so pieces like Annabel Lee are inherently limited. If you’d like information about this original artwork, upcoming Day-Storms Studio releases, or future art drops, sign up for our free newsletter or send me a DM.
No hard sell. If it belongs on your wall, you’ll probably know.
And if not, I’m still glad you stopped long enough to look.
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