Hi there! Emily Midgett from Sixth Street Sundries with you today. I’m so excited to be joining in the Ellen Hutson December Watercolor Days! I have been dabbling in various coloring mediums for the last few years, and I have to say that the Daniel Smith watercolor line is by far one of my favorite mediums to use. And, luckily, Ellen Hutson has such a great stock of this line (as well as marvelous prices!) that I couldn’t resist making two different projects for today, including a video! Disclaimer: I am completely self taught. I have no formal training, so the terminology or artistic theory might not be absolutely correct. These are the techniques that I’ve found work best for me. One of the great things about watercolor is that you can just play around and get some fantastic results! This post is long, so get comfy haha!
For my first project, I decided to create a holiday card using the Ellen Hutson Mondo Poinsettia stamp and die set and the Exploring Watercolor set.
This set includes some great basics to help you start your watercoloring journey, including great quality brushes and paper, as well as some really versatile basic colors that you can use to create almost any color in the rainbow. I’ve created a video to show my process for creating this card:
Watch in HD on our YouTube Channel HERE! Thanks for sharing some comment love and a thumbs up with Emily there and be certain to subscribe to our channel for other fantastic videos!
In case you can’t watch the video, here are a few tips that I find extremely helpful when painting with your Daniel Smith colors: Layers. I’ve found that layers are an extremely important element of all coloring mediums. Because of this, it’s very important to have paper that can withstand multiple layers of liquid, which is one of the reasons I prefer the Arches cold press paper for Daniel Smith watercoloring. I don’t have to worry about the paper disintegrating no matter how many layers or how much scrubbing I do. Having good paper also helps because you can more easily manipulate the color, allowing you a little grace when trying to achieve your shading. Don’t be afraid to play with the shading or to go back in after you initially have painted a petal to add some darker color. Watercolor can be a very forgiving medium if you have the proper tools.
I have another card to share with you today using the Daniel Smith Essentials palette and the Exploring Watercolor set. For this project, I’ve included a few stepped-out photos to highlight what a difference adding that second (or third… or maybe more) layer of shading can add to a watercolored image. Here’s the card, using Ellen Hutson’s Mondo Peony stamp and die set:
I started by stamping and heat embossing three of the peonies from the Mondo Peony set onto Arches cold press using some white pearl embossing powder. I mixed three colors to create the custom pinks and purples for these blooms: Quinacridone Rose, French Ultramarine, and Rhodonite Garnet. To create the variations in shading for these blooms, I altered the ratio of red:blue. For the dark purple peony, I added more French Ultramarine; for the fuchsia peony, I added more Quinacridone Rose. (The Rhodonite Garnet adds some lovely shimmer and creates a pretty pink undertone to the final color. It’s very eye catching, but not a necessity.)
After I had created my custom colors, I painted the first layer of each flower. After those first layers had been painted, I went back to my custom color palette and added a touch of what I consider to be an “essential” color: Neutral Tint. This color is great for creating shadows and adding depth to your painted projects. I’ve used it here to add shadows, as well as to create the artsy backdrop for my floral cluster on the finished card. For the second layer of paint for the flower, I’ve added a touch of the Neutral Tint to my pink and purple mixtures to give them a grayish cast, creating a shadowy effect. You can see the difference that the second layer makes make here:
After I had finished adding shading to the flowers, I mixed up some Phthalo Blue and Hansa Yellow Light (both included in the Essentials kit) to create the green for the leaves. The Essentials color selections give a nice variety of possibilities, depending on how much of each color you mix. I could have made these green leaves more teal by adding more blue than yellow. These particular leaves were about equal parts yellow and blue. I arranged all of the flowers in a cluster in the corner of an A2 sized piece of Arches card stock, adhered them all with dimensional foam adhesive, and trimmed off any pieces that were hanging over the edge.
To create the background, I used the Round #12 brush included in the Exploring Watercolor kit. I saturate my brush with water, pulled quite a bit of Neutral Tint from my palette, and added it to the Arches card front, then cleaned my brush and saturated it again with clean water, putting the tip of the very wet paintbrush to the edge of the paint on the paper to pull the color out very loosely. I allowed it to dry, then stamped the greeting from Ellen Hutson’s Amazing Women stamp set onto some pale gray card stock using Altenew’s Purple Wine ink. I trimmed the greeting strips down and adhered them with dimensional foam adhesive. The final step was to add a few Sparkling Clear sequins to add some shimmer.
That’s all for my projects today! If you made it all the way to the bottom, thank you so much!! I hope you’ve learned a few tips from my meanderings in watercolor. I encourage you to play around with your watercolors and develop your own techniques. It’s so relaxing and SO fun! Thank you so much to Ellen Hutson for inviting me to participate this week! Have a fabulous holiday week!!!
Supplies:
