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!

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!