Watercolour frustrations

I have a confession, for many, many years, I have been a frustrated watercolour artist.  Well artist is the wrong word, I long to be a watercolour artist, but I just can't master the skills particularly for drawing, hence why I stamp and colour instead!   So I was thrilled when we could finally get our hands on the watercolor range from Art Impressions, and even more excited when I saw the layered landscape set from Neat and Tangled as I immediately saw a way to bring my landscape painting frustrations to fruition!

Now this may not be a masterpiece ready to hang in the National Gallery, but for me, it's a pretty good start!

Apologies for the picture - I actually only created the picture this morning so it's still a little wet and needs pressing flat.

So to create it, I taped a piece of Daley Rowney Mixed Media paper to a board with painters tape and sprayed it lightly with water before doing a blue colour wash (I used my Winsor and Newton field sketch paints) from top to bottom.  Using a tissue I lifted the blue from where I wanted my barn, my van and then in a twisting motion to create some clouds.  A quick blast with the heat gun to dry it and then onto the stamping portion.

I stamped the Old Barn using a light grey ink and then made a mask for it.  Once covered with the mask I used distress inks to stamp the mountains behind it using the layered landscape from Neat and Tangled.  I started with a pale green and layered up a grey and darker green over the top being deliberately patchy with the inking (and using a tissue to dab it off areas I didn't want it before putting it on the paper)  For these additional layers I also used the stamp without a block so I could just add pressure where I wanted it.

For the reflexions in the water, I simply turned the hill over and inked up the side you would normally stick to your block so you get a mirror image (don't panic, this won't hurt your stamp - it still cleans up easily)  For the reflection of the barn I stamped the barn first onto a clean hill (you could use a mirror block stamp but I was being lazy and just using whatever was to hand) and then stamping that transferred image into the water to get the correct mirror image to match the original.  I then did a dry brush technique to get some reflection lines in the water but they aren't really showing up in the image too well.

I stamped the Truck from the truck mini set in the foreground, allowing the back to fall out of the frame. and again created a mask. 

I then did my water colouring of the barn, its reflection and the truck.  I need practice, but it was fun giving it a go so I will certainly be practicing when I get the chance.  The images on the front of the Art Impressions stamps give you a good guide if you remember to look at them before you start painting (which I clearly didn't!)

To complete the scene I added some fences (the small one in the background is in the Truck set and the larger on in the foreground is in the Old Barn set), and some fir trees from Tree Set 1 and some grasses using Foliage Set 3.

Not really sure what I'm going to do with it - might just keep it as a practice piece and see if I can improve on it after some more attempts as I like the composition but not the water colouring!

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• The latest release from Flora and Fauna will be in store this week

• The latest release from AlteNew should be in store this week - we've had a partial delivery but are missing a couple of boxes so fingers crossed they're just stuck in customs and will arrive after the bank holiday.

• The latest release from Wplus9 shipped on Friday so there is a fair chance we'll have it by Friday.

For anyone worried we haven't dealt with GDPR, we're on it.  We don't use your data to contact you unless you specifically sign up to our newsletter and blog cookies are the same as any blog.  We'll be sending our dreaded "please resubscribe" newsletter in a couple of weeks once we have all the legal bits updated (grrrr - all this is really is a way for lawyers to make more money!) so if you want to stay in touch, please confirm your details when we ask you.

Right time to get out and enjoy the weekend (well get the skip we ordered filled if that counts as enjoying a bank holiday rest!)

Catch you next weekend

Tara