Stencil-Art

Hi everyone,

Angie here!

I am now officially the blog lady and I am sooooooo excited!  I really have a passion for art and troll various blogs on a daily basis admiring the various art works. There are so many fabulous artists out there and every day I am inspired. 

Watercolour painting is becoming very popular in all forms, from really realistic to a more free flowing stylized art form which I must say is more my kind of thing. 

I’ve just finished a watercolour workshop with the fabulous watercolour artist, Caryl Park [Find her on Facebook at Passion for Arts and Crafts] and feeling so excited about water colouring.   

Watercolour poppies with a little help from my friend the stencil, is the inspiration for today’s easy project.

Materials and tools 

If you are new to watercolours, I don’t believe you need expensive supplies to start having fun and making art! And, it really depends on the project. If I was creating, say a page to frame for somebody, I would probably use good watercolour paper and good paints and brushes but today I am having fun in my practice landscape art journal so I’m using pretty cheap supplies from Stencil Art.

• Paper: I used heavy weight cartridge paper
• Brushes:   Stencil Art stocks a good variety of watercolour brushes from cheap to the really good ones which are quite expensive. I like using those with a nice round tip for poppies. For this particular project I used a number 8 brush for the petals and a number 1 brush for the stems and leaves.
• Watercolour paint: you don’t have to buy the most expensive kinds to start painting . I used a basic watercolour set. I squeezed mine out into a palette but you can use a white plastic plate for mixing your colours. I used Gamboge Yellow, Yellow Ochre, a touch of Scarlet Lake and Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange, Rose Madder and a mixture of Apple green and Sap Green for the stems and leaves.
• Uni Posca Paint Marker PC-1M Ultra-Fine – Black and White
• Ranger Distress Ink - Peeled Paint around the edges of the paper seems to always finish it off.
• Two empty yoghurt containers of water for wetting and rinsing brushes.
• Stencil-Art Poppies stencil

Instructions:

Using a HB pencil and the Poppies stencil, I traced the outline onto heavy weight cartridge paper and used an eraser to lighten the lines so that they were just visible. For this image I went over with a pen so that you can see the lines.

I used a mini mister to spray my watercolour palette and then prepped my paint. Using the pencil outline as a guide I picked up two different shades of colour and using not more than two brushstrokes per petal [for the side on poppies] filled in the colour.

Oranges and yellows look nice with pinks and reds so I’ve used warm colours next to each other on the colour wheel and played around with some simple brushstrokes, just trying to stay loose and free and not thinking about it too much.  

For the side on poppies, I started at the outside of the petals and used a lot of pressure so that the bristles splay out, then dragged a little, and lifted the bush up.

I repeated this for all petals varying the colour by picking up more of one colour than the other.

While the petals were still wet, I picked up some sap green on a small brush and painted in the calyx. If the petals are wet enough the green will be drawn slightly into the petal giving the calyx a softer more natural look.

For the full on poppies I used a similar technique but used more brush strokes and did not lift the brush up to the same angle.

I used a combination of greens and a number 1  brush for the stems. The leaves are not difficult to do but I would practice first, same technique as the petals but much smaller strokes. I used a number 1 brush.

I applied my favourite Tim Holtz Distress Ink Peeled Paint around the edges to give the page a finished look.

Last but not least I used my black and white Posca Paint Markers to fill in the poppy seeds and do a bit of doodling around the edges of the poppies, stems and leaf stems. 

I really enjoyed doing this page and I hope you do to. Give it a try!