Watercoloring 101

Happy Thursday!

Ok, I'm going to try to explain how I watercolor my images. Keep in mind this will be watercoloring 101, because there are many more talented ladies out there that can do a better job than I and have formal training.

Today I'm going to show you 2 types of images, a simple line-art drawing (bella) and a more detailed bird image from clear art stamps. Hopefully this will give you a basic understanding of watercoloring, and give you some practice on it!





Here are the images we'll work with. Let's start with the bellas.








I mainly use my Stampin Up markers & an aquapainter for watercoloring. I'll use 2 colors, a lighter and a slightly darker pink (Pretty in pink and rose romance). First I scribble the markers on an ink pad or piece of plastic. Squeeze your aquapainter lightly and get the tip wet (not dripping wet; wipe it off on a paper towel if it's too drippy). Start with pretty in pink, and go from left to right, making the left 1/2 of the dress dark, and fading off to the right so that the right side is lighter pink. It will create natural shading on line images if you always work with 1/2 of the image dark and the other 1/2 light. Then I'll pick up the darker pink ink, and do the same technique, filling in the left side darker than the right. Keep adding color until you get the effect you want. In this case, I finished off the image with a slight outline of dark pink on the right side of the dress, and filled in the sash and bow directly with the rose romance marker, no aquapainter. Click on the bella photo and take a look at the progression. Your homework: find a stamp that you own that has lots of white space and simple lines; maybe an ornament stamp or a flower, and try the technique. Left side dark, right side light. Ok? And keep in mind, if you don't have markers, you can use your ink pads (squeeze them and get color on the lid of the pad). Also, if you don't have the right colors of pink, you can 'mix' colors. To get a shade in between the 2 pinks, I would mix 1/2 pretty in pink and 1/2 rose romance ink on my 'palette' to create my own shade.

Ok. Now. Let's look at these sweet birdies. Notice how detailed these stamps are. THIS IS GOOD! Don't be intimidated by the detail, it HELPS us a lot! I'm going to use the same theory with these birds, fill in first with the lighter color and then go back over it with the darker color. Here I'm using bliss blue and ballet blue. The top birds are step one: color image with bliss blue on your aquapainter. THEN. On these images, we have help from the detailed lines of the image. Anywhere there are dark detailed lines, I'm going to color in with the darker ballet blue color. The detailed lines indicate where the darker shading should go. Take a closeup look. If you look at my finished card on the top of this post, you'll notice I made 2 colors of birds, yellow and blue, to match my yellow card and blue paper. The yellow birds are done with the same technique, using barely banana and more mustard.

Stamp images by Stamping bella http://www.stampingbella.com/ and Crafty Secrets http://www.craftysecrets.com/.

Whew! Ok. Go play, see whatchoo can come up with!