Watercolor Tutorial #2 Inspired by a Rooster

Travelling Tangles Project

2017

I'm ready to send these to my tangle peeps who responded to my swap offer in my last post, though if any of you out there are ever up to swapping, but would rather not go through the Facebook group, leave me a comment and we can connect via email.

 

I just filled my first album. Crazy!

After a two month (unintentional, but the holidays totally threw me off my game) semi-hiatus from instigating any new Travelling Tangles swaps, I finally dug myself out of my backlog pile. I just signed up for the February group swap which will celebrate the year of the Rooster in honor of Chinese New Year (thank goodness no Valentines Day).

The parameters are to use either a pattern that is feather-like (Drawings was given as an example) or to use colors inspired by roosters.

He's pretty fab!

The tiles above are sort of a mash up of February's rooster theme and January's theme to use patterns you've never used before.

I needed to create a new set of tiles so I figured this would be a good opportunity to share my process now that I have a better cell phone camera;-)

I generally start with some type of color reference, but it's fun to just play around if you're using a  palette set of watercolors. Here's a link to my Color board for my collection of inspiring rust;-)

Here's what I use:

a Strathmore 11x14 watercolor pad

masking tape

a large masonite artist clipboard

a watercolor dry cake palette

a wide wash brush (about 1-2 inches)

a medium watercolor brush

saran wrap

a toothbrush (a soft brush with a flat bristle edge works best)

jar of water

a fine mister bottle of water

a blow dryer

cutting mat

Xacto knife

metal straight edge

Tape a sheet of paper down onto a hard, smooth surface.
Tape securely around the entire edge of the paper. It's kind of hard to see because my table is the same color as the masonite clip board, but I taped my paper to the back of the board.

Get your watercolors really wet by either spraying them with water or load up a large brush with water and release it into the palette. I used all of the colors along the left plus the teal.
Spray or brush clean water over the surface of the paper.
You don't have to cover the whole page. Leaving a few areas dry will give you more variation in saturation when you apply paint.

Starting with your lightest color, load the large brush and swipe color across the page. You can do blobs, blocks or arches of color too. I habitually lay in the color the same way all the time. It's my thang;-)

Do the same with the next lightest color.

and keep going until the page is covered,

Wrinkle up a sheet of saran wrap and lightly press it down onto the paint. Lift it up and move it to another area. If you want you can loosely ball the wrap up and blot it around, moving color from one area to another for more texture.

I apply the darkest colors like blues, purples, deep reds and browns with a toothbrush. Get your paint cake really wet, dip the bristles in the watery paint, then scape your thumb across the bristles aiming the spray onto the paper. You can go heavier in some areas lighter in others. This is my favorite part;-)

This step is the key to smoothing out the bulging paper:
As soon as you're done applying the paint, use a hot blow dryer to get rid of the buckling. Keep an eye on the taped edge and secure it down if its lifting away in spots.
Keep the dryer going until the paper is flat and dry. It won't flatten if you let it dry naturally.

Carefully remove the tape. The paper will still be a little wonky, but once you cut it down to tile size it won't really matter that much. I usually make several sheets at a time then keep them pressed back in the pad underneath a heavy pile of other pads until I'm ready to cut them.

I like to trim the corners into a curve.














I hope you find this helpful. If anyone tries this, please come back and leave comments or questions if there's anything confusing or missing.

Thanks so much for visiting!