ABC of Flowers

A quick and funky single page for you today. A few weeks ago while doing another page I had cleaned off my brushes onto this page... might seems a dirty thing to do, but..

this is the ideal way to get excess paint off your brush...

it means that paint isn't wasted..

and it gives you a base to start a new page. 

There were 3 patches of colour, Ice Blue, Mocha Mousse and Pansy. The colours don't matter, whether they go together or not.. they can always be covered up, partly or totally. As it happens I quite liked the 3 patches, and decided to just cover the whole page with an alphabet stamp. I have this stamp plate twice.... one plate is kept as a whole for doing backgrounds and the other one is cut up into individual letters.I love this set.  Ink and Dog Words 2.

Next I used the stencil PS009 and black gesso to create these silhouette flowers. You can see more clearly here the original patches of paint. 

I cut out some flowers from scrap paper and placed them over the flowers to protect them. 

I then created some background circles using Portfolio Pastels. Light blue, dark blue, brown and orange. 

Next I mixed some Fresco paints with water, just enough to make it runny enough to drip and splatter. I used 3 colours, first Tango, then some Autumn Fire and finally some splatters of Blood Orange. 

Here is how it looks now that the paint drips have dried. 

Next I took  a white Posca pen and did some doodling. 

To finish off the flowers I added some stems using a Faber-Castell Pitt Pastel pencil, this is a bit like charcoal and is quite smudgie. I then added some white details again with the Posca pen. 

Here is the finished page. I was in two minds as to whether I should add a title or a quote at the bottom right corner. I still might go back and do that, but i will leave it for a while... live with it and see how I feel in a week or two. 

This really was just a 'play and see' page, and I found it very relaxing, pages like this are great for trying new techniques. You don't have to finish them in one session, you can keep going back and adding 'stuff'

Give yourself permission to just play. 

Darcy x