CREATING ART THE AMATEUR WAY

Once more I dove into the deep end with this painting. I traced the tiger's face using an online 'free' photo and I did it with pencil because I knew that the graphite would shine on the black paper surface but I made a big mistake. In my enthusiasm and desire to ensure the tracing showed up I pressed too hard and, instead of carefully going around the traced lines, I went at it like a mad woman. The result was that the pencil transferred to the black paper alright but I ended up with a mass of shallow grooves in the paper. I could hardly see which was what. Anyway, I persevered and eventually gave up with the tracing and grooves and made my own way by guesswork and eyeballing.  Another issue which I knew would happen was the limitation of the colours of metallic watercolours that I have and I wasn't about to order a load more.  You can't shade and glaze like you can with watercolours, or at least I can't, because metallic paint lifts off with the touch of a wet...

Had a bit of fun this afternoon trying out metallic paints on Stonehenge 600gsm paper. I've used Coliro a few times but Iuile metallics are recent discoveries. None of the paints used are colour-shifting. The doves' outlines were created using a stencil by Annie Sloan as were some of the trees and the houses, the stars were from another stencil set I have, and the moon is by yours truly. One of the positive things about metallics is that you can lift them right off the paper easily enough (that can also be a negative thing!) but also, when dry you can paint over them if you use some care. The colours can be blended, again with care. The only Iuile paints I used were Forest and Lime from the Shimmer range.  The picture loses some of its razzle dazzle in the photograph because, I suppose, the only way to truly show it off would be in a video with the painting tilted back and forth. 

I had bought a Stonehenge Aqua Black cold press watercolour pad and wanted to try something new. I didn't plan out these two but just went in and the paintings evolved on their own.  The trouble I found was that the paints were easily reactivated when I didn't want them to be. Even so, they were easy to do with no pressure, no planning, no worrying about staining or transparency (they are as transparent or as opaque as you want them to be depending on how much water you use). I call them Cosmic Flora. I think it's a good idea to give your work names—the work that is to keep not throw in the bin (there are special names for those!). Cosmic Flora in Silver Cosmic Flora in Gold