After I took Zana Clark's latest class at the Heirloom Rubber Stamp Festival in early June, of course I had to try again when I got home! Here is one of my experiments- one that I really like the outcome!
I used the same Stamp Zia techiques, watercolors, and rubber stamps as we did in class. (You can see the results of those projects here and here.) I started with the fiber paper, but this time used her "M" series colors, Magic, Moss and Moonlight. I spray blocks of color all over, dried, the threw water drops on it, and dried, and did these two steps again. The last layer was a spray of Glimmer Mist in "sunflower". This gave the background a beautiful, rich, and subtle, shimmer. The colors are rich, deep, and dark. (Unfortunatley, the sheet alone did not photograph well with nothing to focus on.....)
Since the overall piece was fairly dark, I decided I wanted to lighten it up a bit. So I took a large piece of cold press watercolor paper, and misted it with water to moisten the surface and allow the colors to flow. I sprayed with Color Wash in "Ruby", Ultra Color Wash in "Fire Opal", and a few spritzes of Neon spray in "Papaya." When this was dry, I added some strategically placed Chroma Spray in "Lime". When this was dry, I did the whole thing all over again, but while it was still wet, I sprinkled coarse salt all over the surface and let it air dry overnight. After wiping off the remaining salt, I did some final spritzes of the Neon spray in "Kiwi". Those are the big drops of green on the page.
Above: The finished watercolored sheet, 11" X 15".
My main image was stamped using Document ink on an area of this sheet, and then highlighted with colored pencils, per Zana's technique. It's one of her tasteful new nude figures.
Above: Reclining nude, full image, and close-up, wtih colored pencil highlights.
I also stamped on of Stamp Zia's great bugs on the water color paper, and highlighted it with colored pencils as well. In addition to regular Prismacolor pencils, I used a metallic lime green by Lyra on the spots of the moth wings.
Above: Moth image, stamped on colored paper, then highlighted with colored pencils.
I had already chosen some other botanical images from the Stamp Zia catalog, and stamped those in document ink directly on the fiber paper that I had watercolored in the blues and greens. But I chose to pull out the pink and orange from the water color paper, and colored the leaves somewhat fancifully. Boy did I have fun!!
And I finished by attaching my reclining nude and moth images directly to the background paper.
The finished piece, above. You can see I added a couple of strips of orange watercolor background at the top- it seemd to help balance the hot colors on the page. I may even add a couple more touches of that background paper- maybe in the lower left corner- as I live with the piece a bit.
I love this technique, and working on a larger format than greeting cards! What about you? Have you tried this? I'd love to see your experiments with these kinds of techniques and designs, too.
Keep creating!
Hi, Love your projects! Just wondering if you're still involved with the Boston Scrapbooking and Papercrafts meet-up group. I just joined it but noticed the post's were old. Look forward to hearing from you. Julie
Posted by: Julie Jacobs | June 23, 2009 at 02:33 PM