Watercoloring: If I Frame It, Does That Make It Art?

I so enjoyed playing with my watercolor markers and the Art Impressions stamps that I purchased yesterday, that I decided to give it another go today.

It is just so relaxing!

I decided to put this in a frame today instead of turning it into a card.  It felt like a frameable scene and not so much like a card.

Plus, are you like me?  You purchase these little frames when you see them in the clearance bin and you have a basket full of them.  This frame cost a couple of dollars and it has been sitting on a shelf waiting for just the right project.  Today was the day!

Now I have a home décor project!  (Or a gift, if I felt slightly more confident in my skills.  Although it takes a tremendous amount of bravery to share my first attempts at a technique on my blog like this.)

You know what I love about these Art Impression stamps used with the watercolor markers?  It looks like I drew the image.  (I did not!)  It doesn’t look like a stamped image.  It is actually many stamped images that I’ve done on top of each other to create this scene.

One of the classes that I took a couple of months ago was on scene building with stamps.  These Art Impression stamps are designed just for this purpose!  I LOVE these.  This scene uses stamps from 3 sets.  In the class that I took, there was a lot of masking involved to layer the images.  With these stamps, you don’t necessarily need to mask.  I’m sure there will be times I want to mask so things don’t bleed together, but with this scene I didn’t really need too.  I wanted things to bleed together.

 

This is what my desk looked like after I completed the watercoloring:

Phew!

It was a quick project though.

I tried several different brushes as I added the water and pulled the color from the edge to the inside of the image.  It’s all about experimenting to find out what techniques and tools work best for you.  I’m trying to create my own style of doing things so my projects are unique and come out the way that I am envisioning them.

 

I tried a different watercolor paper today.  I used the Arches brand and I liked it much better for these markers.  The only spot I’m not happy with on this project is the light rays.  I thought they would blend out and just give a darker shading of color, but I could not get them to blend out.  They are much too harsh.  I will try a different technique the next time I want to make light rays around this image.

I’m embracing the imperfections as I learn!  (My new mantra.  Practice does lead to improvement!)

There are things about this project that I like better than yesterday’s results.  I was careful not to add too much water to the bushes and grasses.  This allowed for a little more detail.  Plus, with the exception of the dark yellow marker, I made better color choices with my markers.  This is only my second project with this technique, these types of stamps and these markers.

What I will do next is create some samples on different watercolor papers with the different marker colors that I have.  These are the Distress Markers from Ranger and so far I really like them.  I just need to play with the colors and figure out what combinations I like best and  how to put the color on the paper to get it to blend the way I want it too.  Some swatch pages will really help with that.

I actually think that putting it in the frame was a fun idea.  It really made it feel like “art”.  I also signed it, just to add to the art feel.  (I don’t want to insult any real artists, but it did elevate the fun level of this project by putting it into a frame!)

I added a tiny strip of copper Washi tape around the edges because my paper was a bit shy of the opening size and I like that little touch.  The mats came in the frame.  Not bad for a clearance purchase, right?!

Who doesn’t love a light house?  I will confess that one of my secret dreams is to be a keeper of a light house.  Imagine having a craft room at the top.  I wonder what it would feel like to craft with the view or to sit in a comfy chair with some tea and read a good book.  But, I digress!  I spend my days in a building with somewhere between 2000-3000 people and sometimes I just long for complete solitude and quiet.  I find that there is nothing like the peaceful moments sitting on a bench by the sea.  My mind feels quietest and calmest in those kinds of moments.

Thank you so much for dropping by and spending some time with me today.  I hope you enjoyed the project and I hope it inspires you to try a new technique and pull out one of those little frames in your stash.

Have a fabulous day!