Saturday, September 20, 2014

Detailed Watercoloring


Hello! I don't know about you but since watercoloring became trendy in the stamping world I have really fallen in love with the technique and experimenting with all the different looks you can achieve. I wanted to challenge myself and do a more realistic look with a lot  more detail.

I started by pulling out the gorgeous sunflower image that is in the French Country set from Inspired By Stamping and stamped it in a very light ink. You want to use a water soluble ink so that as you add your watercolor colors the outline will not show on the finished piece. I used Antique Linen Distress Ink. 

I like to use Tombow Markers for my watercoloring but you could use Distress Markers, Distress ink pads or traditional watercolors. I like the Tombow's because the colors are very vibrant and you can color directly on the paper or lay down color on a craft mat and pick it up with a paint brush. I used both techniques of coloring for my sunflower. For very light colors I color directly onto the watercolor paper and for darker colors I lay down color on my mat and pick it up with my brush.

I started with my lightest color and slowly built up adding more shadows and depth. In watercolor you don't want to color all of the image as the white paper is what acts as your highlights. If you add too much color to an area you can add a good amount of clean water to the spot and dab off with a paper towel. Most of the over saturated color will lift off.

As you build up color go slowly and add shadow colors as well. For my sunflower I used about 6 colors including a gray for shadows and a couple of browns for the deeper tones. Once my flower was completely colored I went back over the whole flower with my Tombow marker using the very fine brush tip and added in the more crisp lines to get more detail. I went back over the lines with a damp brush just to soften. Not filling in every single petal with the same color or intensity will add to the depth and realism of the image as well. 

I hope my tips are helpful! Just take your time, build up color slowly and enjoy the process. Thanks so much for stopping by and I'd love to hear what you think!
Have a great day!

Supplies:

10 comments:

Margreet said...

Gorgeous coloring of that sunflower...thanks for explaining how to!
xxx Margreet

lisa808 said...

Gorgeous!

Vicki Dutcher said...

LEAH! You are getting so talented with water coloring!! This is amazing~ Practice makes beautification :)

Iris said...

lovely

Cindy Coutts @ Cindy B Designs said...

Leah, this is an amazingly beautiful piece of art. I do hope you frame this and proudly display it. What a fabulous job you did. This is perfection!

Cataleya said...

OMG!!! My dear Leah, it's amazing card!!! Your watercoloring is fantastic!!! I love this sunflower so much!!! :)
~Olga Kovalchuk

Unknown said...

LEAH!! This is an AMAZING little work of art! Your water coloring is fantastic and looks absolutely professional! Whoever gets this card should prop it up on a little easel just like one would do a painting because that's what this is. Bravo!

Donna Nuce said...

Beautiful job on the sunflower Leah! Thanks for some of the techniques you offered (like using the marking at the end). Have a great day!

very_inky_fingers said...

I could not just leave to hop over to the next blog without commenting on this gorgeous watercoloring! Beautiful!!!!

Tami said...

Wow! Gorgeous Watercoloring! Thank you so much for your details on watercoloring this sunflower, helps so much!!