Watercolour week - Lina McDermott

Hi, 

We have a Watercolour week planned for you and who better than our watercolour expert/Craft Barn tutor Lina McDermott to start this week?

Although Lina is a mixed media artist who also does wonders with acrylics (see portrait of her son here), her watercolouring work and classes are always popular at the Craft Barn.

For those of you lucky ones who attended the Extravaganza, you would have seen Lina working with Imagination Craft Decoupage stamps.

She has been kind enough to make a couple of step by step samples for you today and I'm happy to say that she will be back in a couple of weeks for another theme. 

I worked with Imagination Crafts stamps and stencils for the Extravaganza and so I decided to use one of their stamps today.

I stamped the image onto pre-cut watercolour paper with Versafine Smokey Grey. I chose to use this as it gives the appearance of graphite. I then set this with the heat gun.

I decided to use the Inktense pencils for my flowers. These pencils are really lovely to work with and there is a great range of colours to choose from. You can use Distress ink pads if you prefer. I used Spun Sugar Distress ink pad for my background.

I took the pigment from the lead at the top of the pencil using a wet paintbrush. I then placed the colour onto a white tile. I repeated this process until I felt that I had enough of a puddle of colour to work with. I placed a couple of drops of clean water next to my puddle of colour and I pulled the paint into the water.  The reason behind this is to mix up the right tone needed for my first wash of colour. If I were to paint directly from the pencil it would be too dark. It is always better to work from light to dark, as it is easier to make an image darker than trying to correct it if it is too dark. Watercolour uses layers of colour; every layer of the same colour will darken your image.

I then started to paint the petals of my flowers. After each wash of colour I dipped my brush into clean water and squeezed out the excess water with my fingertips and then went over my painted edges with the brush before adding more paint to the paper. I do this is too blend and soften and this stops me from getting hard edges in my work. There is no white in watercolour unless you apply gouache and so the paper acts as the white. Therefore I left several areas white thereby creating highlights but always remembering to use the blending technique to soften the edges. 

The stamped image helps as it acts as a guideline showing where some areas are darker than others.  Before painting the leaves and the stem I made sure that the petals were dry so that the colours did not bleed.

For my background I chose to use Spun Sugar Distress ink pad. I used this in exactly the same way as the pencils. I stamped the pad onto the tile putting a puddle of water next to it and pulled the colour into it.

To create the decoupage I stamped parts of the image and painted some of the petals, leaves and stems again. I cut these out and layered them onto the original artwork sticking them down with mounting pads.  I thought afterwards that silicone might have been a better product to use.

 I cut out several frames from white card and layered them together with double sided tape before adding a top layer made from patterned card.

Materials

Daler Rowney AquafineGummed Watercolour (Cold Pressed) Pad

Decoupage stamp set:Crocus

Derwent Inktense pencilstin 24

Versafine ink pad:Smokey Grey

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 For the second card, I stamped the image onto pre-cut watercolour paper  (cut to 5x5 inches) with Versafine Smokey Grey. Once again, I chose to use this as it gives the appearance of graphite. I then set this with the heat tool.

The following steps are the same ones as the card above

The stamped image helps as it acts as a guideline showing where some areas are darker than others.  Before painting the leaves and the stem again using the Inktense pencils I made sure that the petals were dry so that the colours did not bleed. 

For my background I chose to use Tumbled Glass Distress inkpad. I use this in exactly the same way as the pencils. I stamp the pad onto the tile and put a puddle of water next to it and pull the colour into it. 

To create the decoupage I stamped parts of the image and painted some of the petals, leaves and stems again.  I cut these out and layered them onto the original artwork sticking them down with mounting pads. I didn’t have any silicone, which can be used instead. 

Materials

Daler Rowney AquafineGummed Watercolour (Cold Pressed) Pad

Decoupage stamp set:Fuchsia

Derwent Inktensepencils tin 24

Distress ink padTumbled Glass

Versafine ink pad:Smokey Grey

See you tomorrow