Cloud 9, Tutorials

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Heron in Watercolors
(Author: Tyra L. Smith Cloud9@netnet.net)

Working with watercolors and stamps is a lot of fun. You can spend as much, or as little, time as you like on any project and end up with a fantastic piece!

MATERIALS:
Watercolors (I used tube and pencils)
Colored Pencils
Permanent or Semi-permanent Ink (I used Ranger Archival Inks and Brilliance Inks)
Post-It Notes to make a mask with
Watercolor Paper (I used 140# Hot Press), cut to 9 x 11.5 inches
Assortment of paintbrushes
Masking Tape
Wooden Board larger than the piece you are making

STAMPS:
1. Stampscapes - 279F Pond, 254B Tall Grass Small, 251C Sedge Filler, 303A Stump Small, 276G Cloud Space, 242 Shagbark Hickory
2. Bad Axe Trading Company - 026 Great Blue Heron
3. Stamp Cabana - Big Tree
4. Arizona Stamps Too! - E20 Far Hills

The first thing I always do is figure out what stamps I'll use and get a good working layout to go by for my scene. I stamp assorted images on scrap paper with black and gray ink until I get what I like. I use black and gray to help determine if my perspective is correct. Black ink for things in the foreground, gray ink for things in the background. As you can tell here, I did about 3 different layouts until I came up with one that I liked.

This is the layout I decided to use.

The first thing you do is block your watercolor paper. This means that you just tape it down to a board (with masking tape) on all four sides. This helps to keep the watercolor paper from warping and buckling as you paint on it with the watercolors. It may slightly buckle, but will dry flat. The finished piece measures 8.5x11 inches, so I cut my watercolor paper to 9.5x12 inches so I have plenty of room on the sides to tape it down to my board.

The first image I stamp is usually the main image. I like to build my scenes around a main image, so this works nicely for me. When stamping, you can use black ink if you like. However, I like to choose a color of ink that fall within the color palette of the image I'm stamping. For this heron, I used Adirondack Slate because it is a nice gray, which is one of the colors I'll use when I color the heron itself. By using inks that are part of the image color palette, it will give you a finished look that does not look like you stamped it at all.

I made a mask for my heron by stamping it on a large Post-It Note and then cut out the heron. (for instructions on masking, click HERE) Next I took the Stampscapes Pond 279F image, using Library Green Archival ink and stamped it so that the feet of the heron are in the middle of the pond area. If you must, use a stamp positioner to get the placement right. I just eye-balled the placement referring to the intial layout I made. Then you reink and stamp the Pond image across the watercolor paper, working right to left. Reink and stamp again until you fill out the space below the heron with the pond image. Rather than being a "pond", you have now created more of a wetlands/marsh area. I then added a tree at the left. I had previously worked out the positioning of the tree and all the other stamps when I made my scrap layout. I keep referring back to it as I stamp the scene on my watercolor paper. The tree trunk was inked with Adirondack Mushroom and the top of the tree was inked up with Archival Emerald, once again matching the ink colors to the color palette I'll be using for that image.

I then stamped the tree at the right, choosing one that is slightly smaller than the one on the left to achieve a sense of depth within the scene, using the same ink colors as I did with the first tree. It isn't shown here, but I made masks for the trunks of the tree and the heron and put the masks on the stamped images. Then I used Adirondack Mushroom to stamp the Far Hills image. And lastly I added the small stump images. Note here that I decided to not add in a fallen tree trunk with the stump and birds in the sky as I had it in my scrap paper layout.

Now its time to add some color!!! After removing the paper rmasks, I used a combination of watercolors and colored pencils for this piece. Colored pencils are waxed based and offer a fantastic resist to watercolors!! I colored the tree trunks with colored pencils and then traced over a few of the branch lines in the upper part of each tree. I used a medium shade of purple to outline the far hills, colored the bush at the left with red colored pencils and also colored the tree stumps with colored pencils. I whisped in some ground texture between the far hills and the marsh area using the Stampscapes 254B Tall Grass Small and 251C Sedge Filler images and the same color of ink I used for the marsh ground area (Archival Library Green).

I finished coloring the far hills iwth colored pencils (medium and light blue, adding shading as desired) and then stamp the clouds in the sky (Stampscapes 276G Cloud Space) using Brilliance Pearlescent Lavender ink. Het set the ink to dry it. Brilliance ink, when heat set, is permanent and will provide a nice resist to the watercolors. Once I finsihed that, I masked the heron, tree trunks and tree stumps with liquid masking fluid. I like using liquid masking fluid with watercolors because it resists the watercolors and makes it a lot easier to paint the ground work. Because I am going to use watercolors, a traditional paper mask won't work.

I painted my first primary layer of color, greens for the ground work, blues for the sky work and a teal color for the marshy water area. Unfortunatley, a scan does not do justice in capturing the intricate shading you can achieve with watercolors. My main concern at this point is to simply get the first layer of color down so I have a better idea of where I'm going. Let it dry before proceeding.

I completed the scene by adding a few more layers of watercolors in various colors and letting each layer dry before applying another. I like the depth of color and shading you can get this way. Don't be afraid to whip out your watercolor pencils and/or watercolor crayons and waterbrush to do your final color additions and shading. Once I fnished painting and the paint was dry, I removed the masks I had painted on the tree trunks, tree stumps and heron. I used colored pencils to color the heron and touched up the tree trunks and stumps as needed with colored pencils. Remove the piece from the board you blocked it on and trim it up..WALLAH all done!!!

Copyright Tyra L. Smith 2007:Cloud9@netnet.net
NOTE: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM BY ANY MEANS ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR OTHERWISE, WITHOUT FIRST OBTAINING WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.