And Then It Popped...

 Yesterday I showed you another watercolour paint doodle I was working on and today I got out my Microns and Pitt pens and added some black doodling over the paint.

I just love how it makes it pop.  I've also added some additional dimension using my Inktense  pencils to add some shading and highlights here and there.

The final step was to add the words and since the image ended up reminding me of a garden path, that lead to the words I chose.  In hindsight, I wish I had written the text in larger, bolder letters, but what's done is done.

If you look at the close ups, you'll also see that I added some text, using a Micron 01 between the leave and petals on the right hand page too.


It was fun drawing the little pebble circles within the larger circles.  I love doing that when I free motion stitch so I decided to add it in my doodle too.

The photos don't really show it, but I love the contrast between the regular watercolours and the Twinkling H2Os.  It just give a bit of glimmer and pop to some areas.

Thanks for your visit.  I don't say it enough, but I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by!  Have a fabulous week!

More Watercolour Doodling

Several days ago, I posted about my first attempt at paint doodles and I said that I was way out of my element.  However, I'm discovering that this is really a lot of fun.  As I was working (playing) with this one, I found I lost all track of time, in a good, relaxing sort of way.

For those of you familiar with Joanne Sharpe's 'Color Love' class, this is lesson 11, so the next step will be getting out my Pitt pens and Inktense so that I can doodle over the doodles with fine black lines and add another level of depth with the Inktense.  I love the idea of adding the layers...

But, it's 4 degrees C here today (that's 39F for my US friends), which is crazy for mid-January, so I'm off for a long, lazy walk with my 'little old lady', Casey (my 12 1/2 yr. old Golden).  I'll post another shot of this when I get the next step finished.

Watercolour Paint Doodles

As you may know from reading some of my previous posts, I am taking Joanne Sharpe's Color Love 101 online class.  In the last couple of days I've been exploring the whole idea of doodling with a paint brush and watercolours.  I discovered very quickly that I am way out of my comfort zone on this activity!

I started with a cool colour palette since I love working with blues and greens.  I added a bit of yellow to warm it up some and give it a bit more of a pop, but it's certainly not great.  However, that was just my first attempt...

My second try was with a warmer palette, bringing in reds, pinks, and oranges, but still using the green for some contrast.  I think that my lines are too 'up tight'.  Somehow I need to relax so I can get a more easy flow to my lines.  Of course, if I truly learned to relax I wouldn't be me, now would I ;o)
You'll notice I included my favourite spiral lines...

 

As a complete aside, I had this background done on a page from many months ago, and I recently saw this wonderful quote by Mark Twain so I used my correction pen and wrote it out so I wouldn't forget it.

May Art Calendar Journal

My May art calendar journal spread is ready for the journalling.  I started by using various spray inks to give the page a gently mottled look.  I then added a variety of old silk flowers and a few paper flowers to create masks for each of the days of the month and I sprayed over them with green.  I removed the flowers...getting my fingers all inky :o)...and let that layer dry.  When that was totally dry, I came in with my Micron pen and did the lettering and a bit of soft sketching around the flower shapes.  After stamping the leaf shapes and the birds, butterflies and dragonflies, I used my Micron again to draw in stems and swirls to connect the leaves.  Finally, I did a bit of colouring with my Peerless watercolour pigments...and you have May flowers to follow the April showers.

April Calendar Art Journal

Yesterday I was able to finish the watercolour painting of the April calendar page.  I was a bit unsure about the 'cheesy' idea of using raindrops for the journalling shapes, but I'm really pleases with how the page turned out.

I used a 'light' hand lettering font since April is a month of new beginnings.  The long dark winter is over and everything just seems to lighten up.  

 I found this cute little girl in a magazine add (in a March issue from 2009...sometimes being a bit of a pack rat comes in handy) and I thought she'd be perfect since I used to love playing out in the rain.  Realistically it would never have been warm enough to do this in April, but it still makes me smile.

 I also found these two pairs of legs so I gave a couple of the raindrops legs.  And, since they had legs, I also drew in a couple of pairs of eyes so they can see where they're going :o)









In addition to drawing in little lines, circles, triangles and squares to represent rainfall, I wrote, in very tiny letters, using a Micron 01 pen, a variety of phrases such as, "it's raining cats and dogs; rain, rain go away, come again another day; it's raining, it's pouring the old man is snoring..." etc.

I used the Peerless watercolours to do this page.  They're wonderful to work with!  I wasn't sure what to use as my background colour since it was raining but I didn't want it to be too dull and dreary.  I settled on the Bismark Brown (one of the colours in the Joanne Palette Colors - a palette made up of 15 colours specifically selected by Joanne Sharpe for her Color Love online class) and I couldn't be happier.  It's a lovely warm colour, yet not too bright for my rainy day page.

Work in Progress...

Yesterday I was going between a few different activities in my studio.  I can't seem to stay focussed on one thing for very long these days, so I've been starting a lot but not finishing anything...'sigh'.

Back in the Spring, I started to photograph numbers while out on my cycling trips.  It made for some disjointed rides since I was always stopping and pulling out my iPhone, but I ended up with a great collection of numbers from everything from road signs and telephone poles to rural mailboxes and house numbers.  I'm now starting an art quilt using my recently marbled fabric and those photographs.  Here's a bit of a preview of it.  So far I've transfered the images onto fabric and started to piece some of it.

As you know from previous posts, I've also been setting up a calendar journal for 2013. You can see the first three pages by clicking on these links: January, February, and March.  Well, today I got started on the drawings for the April page.  I'm afraid it's a bit cliche since I've gone with raindrops as the shape, but I've also added a few fun bits cut out of magazines.  I'm planning to use the Peerless watercolour paints to colour this page.

Hopefully I'll have some finished work to show you soon...thanks for your visit :o)

Vibrant Watercolour

As you may know from reading some of my other posts, I'm taking Joanne Sharpe's Color Love online class.  Well, she's introduced me to a fabulous new (to me) watercolour media called Peerless Transparent Watercolor.  As it turns out, this product was developed by Charles F. Nicholson in 1885 and the formula hasn't changed since then. For those of you who are of a more mature age, if you remember old photos that were colourized in the 1940s-60s, they would have been colourized with these pigments!  Click on the word history if you'd like to know more. 

They come on small sheets (about 2.5" X 6.6") but on Joanne's recommendation, I've cut mine in half and put the other half away for now.  I've also made a little colour legend since the colours don't necessarily look like what you'd expect to see.  A little goes a long way too!  They provide these vibrant, beautiful colours and I suspect that they will last for a long time.  For those of you who like an easy, portable product, these are fabulous!  All you need is your water brush, your Peerless and a journal and your ready to go!

I suspect that my next calendar journal page will be done using these.  Now I just have to think about the design for the page.

Here's a link to a demo of how to use Peerless watercolours. And a video of Jane Davenport demonstrating how she created a fabulous paint palette using Peerless watercolours.