NEGATIVE WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

 Negative painting is when you pick out specific shapes on a completely covered, coloured background, then fill the areas surrounding the shapes with another colour, making the shapes stand out. I used either white acrylic paint pens or oil-based gold pens to outline the shapes. This is generally created at a larger size than the size I work on, with ATCs being only 2.5" x 3.5", and it's always a challenge to translate some of the techniques I try onto this smaller size. I was quite happy with how these turned out, and I have no words; I literally have no words on 5 of these 6 samples (which led to these oh-so-creative titles for each ATC). I wanted the paintings to stand alone without the distraction of words, except for the fish one, as that one needed something in between the waves. 😃🐟

Pot 1

Pot 2

Poppies

Leaves

House

Fish

SIMPLE WATERCOLOUR CIRCLES

 I have a reasonable collection of metallic watercolour paints and love using them as accents. Still, for this technique, I've used the metallics to paint the circles, then hand-drawn or stamped simple botanical designs over the shapes and accented them with some really sparkly metallic watercolours. My favourite sparkly ones are my Lisilinkas. But I do have some beautiful MAB watercolours from Etsy, and I have used my Supervision Mica Watercolours, which are also granulating. The Supervision ones are available from different sellers on Ali and come in 1ml, 2ml, or tube sizes. All of the paints listed above have links to their pages.

"CTRL ALT DELEAF"

"Talk dirt to me"

"Stay wild"

"Shiitake"

"Entwined"

"Choose to shine"

STITCHED WATERCOLOUR

 In my previous life as a costume designer/maker, I had a collection of specialty metallic threads that were used on the costumes. So when I saw someone had used metallic thread as an added accent to a watercolour painting, I just had to give this a go on my ATCs. I love the simple style of the painting that is elevated with the addition of the metallic thread, and as usual, these all look so much nicer in real life. I know this technique can be used with simple stamped designs, but I like that you can paint whatever you want and then embellish it with metallic thread. The thread is doubled, so it shows up more as it is quite thin, and you simply attach it to the back with a little double-sided tape. I used Daniel Smith watercolour paints for all of the painting. I think the amount of white background space also helps to enhance this particular style.
If you click on the picture, you will get a better idea of how the stitching looks.

"Grow with the flow"
(Silver metallic thread)

"Bloom"
(Gold metallic thread)


"I paint flowers"
(Gold & orange metallic thread)

"Life's a painting"
(Gold metallic thread)

"Lookin' sharp"
(Gold metallic thread)

"Be-leaf"
(Gold metallic thread)


I saw some cards on Pinterest and made a couple following the same style. They inspired me to try this technique on ATCs. I did my own stitch designs and the possibilities are endless.

"Possible"

"Ordinary"

MARBLE PAINTING WITH ACRYLIC INKS

The last time we used a marble with inks for a background was in 2014, so I thought it was time to revisit it. It's an easy technique and lends itself to the bigger size as well as ATC size, so it's a good opportunity to create a cover using this technique. I used black acrylic ink for the marble rolling as this ink is permanent when dry, so when you do your watercolours over the top, it's not going to smudge or move. You can pick out individual shapes to colour or, as I've done on a couple of mine and the cover, colour the whole background in a few colours blended together.

"Fa-Cologne"

"Toot toot"


"Not a big fan"

"Dear Future"

"Art"

"Trust"


This is my cover for Technique Book #34. The size is 20cm x 15cm (or 8" x 6").
I've used a white gel pen to make dotted marks within some of the black lines.

LINE DRAWN BOTANICALS

 It can be challenging working on the smaller size of ATCs, which are 2.5"x 3.5" (or 63.5mm x 90mm). Some techniques transfer well to the miniature size, but others do not. This technique works really well as you are only working with a hand-drawn image and then filling in the negative space with a single watercolour. By using only one colour for the negative space in the background, your eye is immediately drawn to the image, and you can keep this drawing quite simple but still have it look very effective. 

"Potential side effects"


"Keep life simple"


"... and breathe"


"Nature"

"Focus on the good"

"Bloom and grow"


These are what made me try out this particular technique on
ATCs, but I can no longer find the video I saw. I first
created these on this larger size, which I believe would work
really well on a card. 
I knew I should have saved the video so I could link it here.
Apologies to the creator for not linking it, I do love your technique!

WATERCOLOUR FRAGMENT LANDSCAPES

 I could count on one hand the number of ATCs I've made in landscape orientation as I find the portrait design suits the small space of ATCs much better. However, landscape is the only way to go when you are doing a painted landscape such as these watercolour ones! I've seen this technique created on larger pieces, 5" x 7" or 8" x 10" and larger, but to crank up the degree of difficulty, let's work on 2.5" x 3.5". Yes, I know we use metric, not imperial in Australia, but for ATCs it's much easier to cut them to 2.5 x 3.5 instead of 63.5 x 88.9mm. 😊
I had an internal battle with myself about using words or quotes on these mini paintings so I hedged my bets and did some with words and others without. I certainly didn't want to cover up too much of the landscapes so I also used clear sticky words on a couple so you could still see the background.

"Dreamscape"

"Adventure awaits"


"Summit"


"Ski run"

"Landscape"


"Forever wild"

(I used granulating paints on this one which you can see, gives a very different effect.)

WATERCOLOUR STRIP PAINTING

 This title could be slightly confusing. The watercolour pictures were painted first, then cut into strips and attached to colour-coordinated Gelli prints that show through the gaps in the strips. I used some atc's that I had made in various other classes but if making them for this technique, you need to keep your main imagery towards the centre as the watercolour picture ends up only 5cm wide before you cut it down and you don't want to lose too much detail from your edges. This technique would also be great for a card and you can afford to be a bit more generous with your artwork as you're working on a larger area.

I used Daniel Smith watercolour paints for 3 of these samples, Distress Watercolour Pencils for 2 of them and finally, sparkly gel pens along with Pilot G-Tec C4 coloured gel pens that activate with water for the final one. The moth one with the gel pen colouring was the only one with a stamped image, all the rest were hand painted. 

"Every colour"
(The trees were painted with Distress
Watercolour Pencils then outlined with
a Pilot Black G-Tec C4 gel pen.)


"Collect Beautiful Moments"
(Painted with Daniel Smith watercolours.)


"Live gently"
(Painted with Sodalite Genuine and Hematite
Genuine Daniel Smith watercolour paints
which are both granulating colours.)

"Tomorrow"
(Painted with Daniel Smith watercolours.)


"Small beginnings"
(Painted with Distress Watercolour Pencils.)

"Attitude"
(Stamped image coloured with sparkle gel pens
and Pilot G-Tec C4 coloured gel pens which
bleed when activated with water.)

WATERCOLOUR QUIRKY BIRDS & STENCILS

 I've been seeing an abundance of gorgeous whimsical and quirky watercolour birds appearing all over Pinterest and Google and I love the imperfect and naive style of this type of watercolouring. Virtually anything goes with these funny little birds and you can add their wings, beaks, legs & plumage however you want. I thought I'd step it up a bit by adding some stencilling in the background. Covering the birds with a mask made from paper towels protects them from the inking when stencilling. Of course, I had to do a mini-sheet of quotes to go with these birds for the girls as well as a page of some ideas for various birds and how to draw/decorate them too. I hope they all have fun painting these, I sure did!

"Eat local"


"Foraging"

"No worm"


"Shenanigan enthusiast"


"Fuster cluck"


"Winging it"