Parade of flowers

The flowers continue to bloom across my blog this week and it’s making me pretty keen for spring to arrive. Today’s poppies are as realistic and detailed as you are likely to see from me! A little different from my distress stain loose and watery florals.  I used a stamp positioner to stamp ‘parade of flowers’ in antique linen distress ink on cold pressed watercolour paper; because of the texture of the cold pressed paper I stamped a few times to guarantee a complete image.

All the painting was done with Dr Ph Martins Hydrus watercolours. When undiluted the colours are very vibrant so I put only a drop of each colour in a palette then added water. To keep the colour scheme muted and cohesive I limited my paint choices. The petals are painted with ‘deep red rose’ and the leaves and stems a mix of phthalo green, deep red rose and Venetian brown. The centres of the flowers are gamboge, with dark details added in ultramarine and Venetian brown.

I worked on one petal at a time painting first with water then dropping in some deep red rose paint. I blended the colour to the edges then added more paint if necessary to create shadow or deeper colour near centre of flower. While each petal dried I worked on a non-adjacent one. When all the petals were dry I added some more red here and there to create a bit more depth and when that dried I used a very fine tipped brush to paint veins on some of the petals. I wanted to stamp the sentiment on a matching panel so I painted diluted deep red rose paint on a scrap of hot pressed watercolor paper the die cut three tags using die from ‘gift card pocket’ set. With the stamp postioner I was able to stamp ‘With Love’ sentiment from ‘special wishes’ set on tags one at a time so when together they would over lap each other.

I wrapped twine around top of painted panel, attached the three sentiment tags over the top and attached the panel to a natural coloured card base.

Don’t forget to pop over to the ‘Sparkle with Us’ challenge hosted by The Foiled Fox and me. There is already some sparkly inspiration linked up but we’d love to see more.

Supplies

Stamps: parade of flowers, special wishes

Die: gift card pocket

Paper: rough 100% cotton watercolour paper, hot pressed watercolour paper

Ink: antique linen distress ink, imperial purple versafine ink

Paints: deep red rose, gamboge, pthalo green, Venetian brown, ultramarine Dr Ph Martins Hydrus watercolors (soon to be available at The Foiled Fox)

Also: antique hemp twine