Before I jump into a LONG technique post, I just wanted to give a shout out for some upcoming Copic Certification and Workshop Classes! Lori Craig is teaching in St. Louis on March 4-5, and I'll be teaching in the Elk Grove area of greater Chicago on March 11-12. Cindy Lawrence will be in Hanover, Maryland the next weekend, March 18-19; and Michelle Houghton will finish up March with classes in Atlanta on March 25-26. I'm back in Portland, Oregon on April 15-16. We'd love to have you join us!
Welcome! I finally finished the work on my "must do" list and had a chance to just play today, so it's a mishmash of supplies and thoughts that I'm sharing today. I had ordered this lovely Peonies on Parade stamp from Papertrey Ink a few days ago and decided that it was a perfect size to experiment with some ideas I've had rumbling in my head lately. Watercolors have been really popular for a while now; and although I have several different kinds of watercolors (and have been playing with them!), I wanted to see if I could use my Copic Various Inks (reinkers) to achieve a similar loose look. I tried three different ways, one of which you see above. Are you ready for a LOT of pictures? Some aren't very pretty, but as my friend Lori Craig reminded me, "Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better!" :-)
For this piece, I started with a 4-1/4 x 5-1/2" sheet of X-Press It Blending Card. It's not a glossy cardstock, but it does have a very smooth, hard surface. I used a magnetic board (linked at the bottom), paired with some strong magnets to hold my cardstock down, knowing that I was going to get it very wet. The magnets and magnetic board setup worked perfectly, and I can't wait to see if that works well with really wet watercolors too! Anyway, I soaked my cardstock with Copic colorless blender solution and them just dripped ink in the areas that I wanted to stamp my peony and leaves images, then dripped ink for the sky as well. I used a water brush that was filled with colorless blender to move the inks around a bit and get full coverage. (I did not pre-stamp any images, because I wasn't overly concerned that I fill the image lines perfectly anyway.)
Shown above are the Various Ink colors that I used. I've also misted the cardstock lightly with colorless blender solution to create some fine texture. TIP: If you try this, be careful not to overdo the spritzed colorless blender, or you will fade much of your color out. You want just enough for texture.
Next I stamped my images in MFT's Licorice Black Hybrid Ink. (I had tried an earlier version stamping the image FIRST, and I'll try to finish editing the pictures to share that one tomorrow.) I stamped the peony first, then masked its edges with wide Post-It tape so that I could stamp leaves a little closer to the flower than I would have been able to without masking.
In addition to taking the mask off, I've dripped colorless blender straight from the bottle all over my cardstock. At this stage, it was a little less defined than I wanted it to be.
So I used my Copic Colorless Blender (in marker form this time) to push some of the ink that was in the leaves out through the back of the cardstock. That allowed my shadows to be darker than my leaves and gave me a place to introduce a cleaner green color as well. I have a paper towel underneath the cardstock to soak up any color that I can push through the paper with my colorless blender.
Here I've added cleaner greens to the leaves, as well as a yellow center to my peony (after first pushing the red-violet inks though the cardstock). I introduced more blue-violets to the shadows to push them deeper, cool them down, and give more contrast with the leaves. I'm finally getting more comfortable with how the image is looking. . . Believe me--I had my doubts that this piece was going anywhere but the garbage for a while there! But that's half the fun of experimenting, isn't it?
I have one more version that I almost threw away, but then decided to keep playing with. I'll try to get the picture of that ones edited by tomorrow and then show you the similarities and differences that paper and ink application techniques make. While I probably could have planned my layout a little better, I was still overall happy with how it turned out and thought it looked a lot like watercolor, while still giving me some of the control that I enjoy in my Copic markers.
Thank you for stopping by today!
