Zinnias

Posted: March 21, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Coloured pencil, Echidna Studios, pastel pencils, zinnias | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

As the title suggests I have zinnias to share today. This pair is just one of seven images in the new digital set, Zinnias, from Echidna Studios. There is a bunch of five blooms, the pair shown on my card and some single blooms. All the images can be layered which means you can create your own bunches or rows of zinnias for printing.

I worked on Montreal Canal Paper, a textured paper made from cotton rag. In the past I’ve used it for watercolour, this time I used my new pastel pencils. The pad of paper I used has six different colours; I chose the green as it gave me an appropriate background. The texture in the paper holds the soft pastel well. I printed the two zinnias on the paper using my laser printer.

I kept the colour scheme limited and enjoyed blending two or three colours together to get diffferent colours and tints. From the Faber Castell set of Pitt pastels I used two greens -165 &170, red -194, blue -157 and white -101. I did most of the blending by adding one colour over another but further softened the blends at the end with a burnishing pencil.

As I often do, I searched for photo inspiration before colouring and found some deep burgandy colours among the many options. I think I might plant some in my garden this spring; the new digital stamps have inspired me. Let me know if you have success with zinnias in your garden.

Watercolour on coloured paper

Posted: May 10, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: bunches for you, flower fantasy, peaceful time, Penny Black, Watercolour | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

I came across some interesting paper at Art Noise when I was in Kingston on the weekend. It is called canal paper and is made by Paperterie St. Armand in Montreal. The pad of paper I bought has six different colours, all made from cotton rag; the fibres are left from clothing company offcuts. There is no bleaching or dyeing, the colour of the papers is from the colour of the cotton fabrics.

The paper is not the only new thing I tried out on these cards. I also have some delicious new Sennelier watercolours. I was interested to see how they looked on the coloured paper and also how the paper held up to a watercolour wash.

These cards are one layer making use of the natural deckled edge on one edge of the paper pad. I scored the paper then taped it to my glass mat, lining up the frog tape with the grid on my mat to create a masked panel in the centre of the card front. I used three colours of paint on each card and matching envelopes. I was impressed that no paint seeped under the edge of the tape so I had crisp edges to my watercolour panels.

I stamped the new line art stamps from Penny Black with Ranger archival inks and was very happy with the crisp prints on the paper, I thought there might be a bit of bleed as the paper has quite a soft surface but the stamping was crisp and there was no bleed through with the watercolour washes. For the two cards above I simply stamped the image over the watercoloured section. On the card below I did the same then added some extra painting to the flowers using the same paint colours. The colour of the paper makes the paint colours more muted than they would be on white or cream but I liked the more rustic simple style on these cards. You could definitely use this technique with the traditional white watercolour paper and achieve much brighter results.

My cards measure 5″x 4¼” so I decided to make custom envelopes from the same paper. I used the We R Memory Keepers 1-2-3 punch board to make an envelope to fit and before I taped it together I masked a section of the front so I could watercolour in the same colours used for the cards.

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