Calm waters

If you are stamping or painting canoes one of them has to be red doesn’t it? When I saw this scene in the recent PB release I knew I would stamp and paint it to have a red canoe. The stamp is called ‘calm waters‘.

I kept my hot pressed watercolour paper panel in the stamp positioner for almost the whole time I was working on this project because I was adding colour little by little. I started with the stand of trees across the lake and stamped them in old paper distress ink, it is a pale green over which I knew I could add darker inks. I added some peeled paint and forest moss ink to the stamp with markers to give shadow and depth to the trees then added ground espresso ink to the base of the trees and along the land jutting out behind the grass. On my last few applications of ink I spritzed a little water on the stamp to make the colours blend.

On the other side of the stamp I inked the grasses in fossilized amber ink, stamped then added some peeled paint ink to the base of the grasses again spritzing the stamp to blend the colour a little. I inked the water’s edge on the far side and the near side with weathered wood ink and blended it with a paint brush.

To do the canoes I inked first the red canoe with a candied apple distress marker and painted it with extra ink smooshed onto my glass mat. I stamped the base, paddles and seats in the canoe with fossilized amber and when the ink dried I outlined the canoe rim with a black soot marker. I stamped the second canoe with rusty hinge ink and mixed some with candied apple to paint the inside and outside.

As I had stamped the shore in weathered wood I was able to blend some of the ink with a paintbrush and water and add some fossilized amber here and there to give the shore grey and yellow tinges. After I had added all that colour I waited until the panel was dried then heat embossed it with clear powder before painting the sky and water.

With the embossing protecting the land and canoes I was able to paint the sky over the top half of the panel easily. I used salty ocean ink to make this scene a sunny one ( I think I’ll do another with a moody thunderstormy sky!) I used salty ocean for the lake also but added weathered wood to darken the blue. While the lake was still wet (when isn’t the lake wet!?) I dropped in some ground espresso and peeled paint ink to make soft reflections of the trees.

This technique is basically the same one I used for my windmill card but there was a lot more detail to work on with this scene before I embossed. If you don’t want a shiny embossed layer on your finished card you can iron it off when all the painting has been done. I ironed this panel face down onto a few pieces of computer paper which absorbed the sticky embossing. After my recent Australian themed scenic card, I think this one is a little more Canadian.

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