Quick & Easy

Our Watercolour Weekend theme on the Art Impressions blog this weekend is "Quick & Easy".  For me, that means a simple scene.  I often reach for more than a dozen stamps to put my scenes together, but this one took just 4:

I stamped the larger toadstool from the 5125 - WC Elves Set onto my Canson XL Watercolor Paper, colouring it first in my Tombow Dual Brush Marker #565 Deep Blue, and then #969 Chocolate.  Using my stamp positioner, I added the rounded door from 5056 - WC Fairy Doors Set in the same colours. With my damp #1 paintbrush, I pulled the colour out of the lines, in towards the middle of the image.  Using a pencil, I drew in the spots, then painted them with a mixture of #076 Green Ochre and a bit of #126 Light Olive on the lower edges.  I used #346 Sea Green, carefully painting the top of the toadstool, starting with a diluted wash, and layering colour several times to achieve the darker teal shades at the edges and bottom.  For the undersides and stem, I mixed varying shades of #565 & #969 together on my palette to add streaks of greys and browns, and darkening the lines of the image, painting in the door frame the darkest.  #026 Yellow Gold was painted on the door.  The door stamp only has 3 stones, so I painted in the suggestion of several more, having them trail away at the bottom of my scene, and added a bit of shading to each of them.  With the two tiny grasses from 5126 - WC Foliage Set 4, I stamped them both several times on either side of the stem in #076, and painted in a bit of the same colour as a grassy base.  #493 Reflex Blue was painted in as the sky.

I used 5065 - Oval Double Stitched Dies to cut out my image, matted it with grey, and adhered it to my patterned base with 3D adhesive dots.