Watercolour fun - a first try

As someone who has never done an art course before I have been very intimidated by the traditional art mediums.

As I grow older and more confident in my craft room, I've decided to dive into watercolours and see what I can come up with. I have no training in perspective etc, so please forgive wonkiness (is that even a word?), imbalances and general not-perfectness. I wasn't trying to for perfection, I was simply giving it a shot ;)

I decided to play with ATC size canvasses (2.5" x 3.5") to have some familiar ground to start from. I found this great tutorial series online that gets you to think outside the box. It's called the 10-minute ATC's series by Art Trader magazine and I went for the Watercolour faces one.

Once I got going, I just played around to see where this little experiment would take me. I would highly recommend not only the tutorials from them, but having a look at their (free!) magazine. Your inner artist will sing.

This is the result of the experiment. Seven ATC's of random things done in my favourite colour combinations.

The whole collection

Here is the faces experiment ATC's. I swished paint around, saturating here and subtracting there until I could make out a general face shape. I then used a black fine art pen to fill in the details. I'm sure years from now I'll have a good giggle at the attempt, but for now I am glad I gave it a try. I'll certainly try it again in the future.

Watercolour faces ATC's

For the hot air balloon ATC I had an image to reference from and although the balance is all wrong, I do like the feathery and light feel of the final ATC. 

Hot air balloon ATC

The floral one was done after seeing the 10-minute ATC: Acrylic Impressionism tutorial and wanting to see if I could emulate it with watercolours. I blobbed paint around and roughly formed the flowers and then added the details with a black fine tipped pen. I think it's quite dreamlike.

Impressionism watercolour flower ATC

The next ATC is a good example of the end result being very far from the idea in mind. I was trying to do a cupcake, but as the painting went along, it formed more of a bowl with something in it, so that's what I ended concentrating on. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow (haha). I think the pink stuff could be candy floss. Or strawberry ice cream.

A bowl full of pink stuff watercolour ATC

This ATC was a fun experiment in seeing the shapes in a standard mess of colour. I took some paint and just dragged it along the page in random patterns. As I looked at it, I kept seeing a map emerge. So who was I to deny it from coming out? The coastline was pretty much set, so I just  played with how watercolours can be lightened and darkened. Looking at it now I would probably have done less roads and let the watercolour take the main stage, but these are the lessons we learn right?

Map in watercolour ATC

The flowers one is a clear indication that I am very far off with balance, relationships and perspective in this journey. For now though, I am happy that it does somehow look like flowers, if you squint and twist your head just right ;)

Watercolour flower ATC - wonky and all

Here are some of the final ATC's that I made up with the imagery. I sent them along on Swap Bot, my favourite place to swap.

The hot air balloon got a trim and was stuck to some harder carton. The watercolour paper is not sturdy enough to travel safely in the mail. Distressing the edges gave it a nice vintage feel and made the colours pop. The bird ATC is a separate project. Watch the blog for a Silhouette update coming soon (wink, wink).

Sender's choice ATC's for a Swap Bot swap

The flowers and map also got a trim and was mounted on some sturdier card for mailing. I distressed the decorative edges in complementing colours.

Watercolour ATC's

I hope you are inspired to try something new today.



Hugs
Mar

Snowflake ATC's

I have the pleasure of dealing with snow in my imagination far more than dealing with the reality of it. I've had minimal contact with snow and only made one snowman in all my life. I think there might have been a snow-angel in there somewhere, but the memory is vague.

When I saw a swap on Swap-bot for some snowflake ATC's I could not resist the temptation and as one does, I wondered what a snow flurry would look like in slow motion.

Snowy ATC fun

I started with making watercolour backgrounds in shades of blue. Then I did some embossing and stamping. I love how the distress ink images seeped into the watercolour paper making fuzzy snowflakes. I added some silver snowflake stickers and tiny gemdots to give the ATC some interest.

Here the days are getting colder. My kind of weather :)

Hugs
Mar

Swap Bot fun

So to push my arty ways and have mailbox love from all over the world, I have fun on a swapping site called Swap Bot.

It's an American based site, but it has quite a strong international following. If you are into exchanging things with people from over the oceans, come have a look :)

So here is what I have done for some swaps recently:

Black&White Valentine ATC

I love playing with darker themes every now and then, so this was an instant draw. It's pretty tough not to associate this theme with old black and white movie, so I wanted to force myself to think outside the box. I went for a little grunge and dark Alice-in-Wonderland-y angle.

Blue ATC

This one was a pretty simple swap. We just had to make an ATC where blue was the main feature colour. Easy peasy. Valentine's day is on my mind, so why not make something a little more lovey dovey? 

Black ATC

Same as the above swap in that we had to make an ATC with one colour as the main focus. This time is was black who had to take centre stage. Off course I couldn't resist going a little spooky ;)

Love-themed bookmark:

This swap celebrated two of my favourite things: love and reading. Resistance was futile off course. Love can be a little grungy right? So that's what I went with for this swap.

 

Tag-o-Love:

I do love playing wth tags in my craftroom and this swap was the perfect excuse. I thought I'd mix it up a bit and instead of going the usual vertical tag, I went oh so horizontal. 

Spruced up envelopes:

This is not so much a swap as a little something to make the swapping experience more special for my partner. I dress up the envies I send the swap in. I tend to forget to take pics of them, but here are some I caught before they went on their journeys. Maybe blogging will help with that? Hopefully.

HINT: I tend to make a bunch of envies in a big batch. Then they are ready whenever I need them. I take it on as a seperate project. Or just keep some envies lying around and as you craft, use them as the 'clean up' paper. You'll be surprised how quickly they come alive :)

Took the photo after I added the address, so blurred that out.

That's it for now gang.

Mar