A Southwestern Watercolor Weekend

I am using two of the newest sets in the Art Impressions Watercolor line this week to create a couple of Southwestern scenes:

 I am just going to go through the steps to create my oval image today, and I began by cutting out the 5065 Double Stitched Oval Die from my Canson XL Watercolor paper.  I chose the large flat-topped mountain image from 5198 WC Mountain Set, coloured it with my #969 Chocolate Tombow Dual Brush marker, and stamped it slightly right of center, in the top third of my oval.  Since I wanted this to look like more of a ranch scene, I chose one of the buildings from 4962 WC Rustic Cabins Set.  I coloured it in #565 Deep Blue, stamped it off, and coloured #969 over top of it before stamping onto my paper.  With #177 Dark Jade, I coloured and stamped two of the cacti from 5196 WC Desert Set in the foreground, masking each one as I went along.  Then I chose the fence from 4807 Old Barn Mini Set, and used my stamp positioner to place it where I wanted, stamping it in #969 over the masked cacti.  I added the small rock image from the Desert Set in and around the cabin, fence and cacti, as well as the larger rock image from 4763 Southwest set, all in #969.

With all of my images in place, I used my damp #4 paintbrush to pull out the colour in the mountains, keeping the crevices darkest, and spreading the brown down the mountain.  I did the same to the fence and rocks, spreading the brown pigment onto the ground, and creating shadows.  For the cabin, I used #N57 Warm Grey 5 to add a weathered wood look to the walls, using my #1 paintbrush to also paint the suggestion of individual boards.  I picked up #899 Redwood from my palette, and added a red/brown shade to the door and chimney.  I pulled the green out of the cacti with my brush, keeping the top edges of them light or white as a highlighted area.  

Now I scribbled some #565 Deep Blue onto my palette, using it to paint in the sky, add shadows to the mountain, cabin, fence and rocks, keeping in mind that the sun was setting on the right side of my image.  I used the fine point of my #565 marker to add shadow lines directly to both cacti, and on a few other areas of my scene.  I also used the fine point of #991 Light Ochre to draw small yellow lines on the top edges of the cacti, to add a sunny glow to the highlighted areas.  Lastly, I picked up #636 Imperial Purple from my palette, adding touches of colour to the sky, mountains and shadows, which really helped the scenes from becoming too 'brown'.  I matted my images on some warm brown cardstock, and adhered them to my patterned paper with pop dots.

There will be another Watercolor Weekend post on the Art Impressions blog on Saturday, so be sure to check it out to see what Tricia and Dot have created this week!