New Art Impressions Watercolour release!

Oh, yes - it's that time of year again!  Art Impressions is releasing five brand new Ai Watercolor sets over on the blog today, and I am sharing two projects using 5195 WC Swing Set, and 5198 WC Mountain Set:

I had the idea to combine these two sets on my projects, so decided to use the two tire swings, and create a scene behind them.  I first sketched out my idea on scrap paper to determine exactly where I wanted things to be - nothing worse than being half way through a scene like this, and stamping your mountains too high!  It also helped me determine that my tree swing would be up on a hill overlooking a lake and the mountains beyond.  I started by diecutting my Canson XL watercolour paper with the 3 3/4" x 5" Rectangle Double Stitched Die, and I sketched in my tree with a pencil.  Using #N45 Cool Grey 10, I coloured and stamped the tire, and then masked it.  With my stamp positioner, I placed the little girl from 5053 WC Little Girls Set, coloured in #992 Sand.  With my #1 paintbrush, I added #850 Flesh to her skin, and #899 Redwood to her hair.  With the fine point of the #992 marker, I added short sleeves to her t-shirt.  #565 Deep Blue was painted as her jeans, and after adding more water to it, I used it to add shadows.  I added several layers of the N45 to the tire to build up the colour, creating it darker on the underside of it.  Next I stamped the mountains, after colouring them with 2nd generation #565, and a layer of #533 Peacock Blue over top.  I used my damp #4 paintbrush to soften the lines and pull out the colour to add shading to the mountains.  I painted in the hills in front of them, and the lake - pulling the colour from my palette, and used a light wash for the sky.

I used my Twintone marker in #41 Chocolate to outline my tree, and added a few texture lines to the trunk.  I painted shades of #969 Chocolate over the entire tree, keeping it darker on the undersides of the branches, and added #565 as shadows.  With the large leafy image from Foliage Set - 4051 coloured in #158 Dark Olive, I added greenery on either side of the swing, and softened it by dabbing with a damp brush.  I also used the Jumbo Grass stamp with #158 stamping it multiple times, then using the colour from them to paint a suggestion of a grassy bank.  I picked up #992 from my palette and painted in the shore line around the lake.  And finally, to add leaves to the trees, I used the larger leafy image from 4867 - WC Foliage Set 2 New.  Oh - and the last step was to use a fine point grey marker to draw in the chain of the tire swing.  I matted my image with a light kraft cardstock, and used pop dots to mount it on some textured dark grey cardstock.

Now I'm going to share what was my first version of my scene:

While there are some things about it that I'm really happy with (the tree, and the bunny nestled in the grass) - the mountains are just too dark, giving more of a snowy/wintry look that doesn't fit with the scene.

I kept going, adding a fair bit of colour to try to balance out the mountains, but couldn't quite make it work.  I'll still use it as a card for a friend, but it's good to learn from mistakes this way!

Be sure to check out what the other designers have come up with for the new release, and of course you can find all of them to buy over on the Art Impressions website.  Happy stamping!