Flowers in a Vase by Moira Sutton

It has been so grey and miserable this week I wanted to cheer myself up and what could be better than flowers (apart from maybe wine and chocolate!).

 

 

 

 

 

Donna Downey Signature Stencil – Flowers In Vase #2 - DD102

That’s Crafty! Dinky Stencils – Enchanted TC062, Numbers TC060, Bubbles Background TC005

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics – White, Green Gold, Cobalt Teal Hue, Cobalt Turquoise Hue, Primary Magenta, Magenta Quinacridone Red and Pthalo Blue

7.5 x 7.5 Acrylic Paper or Water Colour Paper with a coat of Gesso

Green Pencils or Marker Pens

8 inch Card Blank

Fine Black Posca Pen

 

1.    Put a couple of small dabs of the Green Gold, Cobalt Teal Hue and Cobalt Turquoise Hue paints on your paper, keeping the darker Turquoise Hue to the edge and with a flat paint brush using an up and down motion paint the page this allows the paints to both mix in places and remain true on places. Make sure your page is covered.

2.    Using the That’s Crafty! Dinky Stencils and the same 3 DecoArt paints add stencilling randomly over the background.

3.    Place the Donna Downey stencil over the dry background and stencil the Tinting Base or you could use white paint in a thin layer though you may need more than one layer to get an opaque finish.

4.    Start to work on the flowers, load a round end brush with the Primary Magenta and paint into the lower heads using a dabbing motion as you want texture and variation in hue rather than smooth. Next add the Quinacridone Magenta at the base of the flower heads and work into the flower, you don’t want this colour everywhere again you are looking for texture and light and shade. Next add a tiny amount of the Quinacridone on parts of the edge of each flower. It is best to work of the flowers quickly while the paints are still wet to get the blending looking natural.

5.    Use pencils or pens to colour the flower stems.

6.    Use a finger tip to add a dab of white to the flower centres and draw in the flower edges with the Posca pen keeping the lines sketchy and imperfect.

7.    Next paint in your surface on which the vase is sitting. I use the Pthalo Blue paint but added streaks of the Cobalt Teal and some white paint to get a variation rather than a solid block of colour.

8.    For the lower part of the Vase mix Cobalt Teal and Tinting Base (or white paint) and looking to get a sort of watery feel inside the vase, for the upper part a mix of the Cobalt Teal Hue and Tinting Base.

9.    Take the Black Watercolour pencil and draw in a sketchy fashion around the vase and using a wet brush soften the black lines and move some of the black into the vase you are looking to have the sides of the vase a little darker than the centre to give a sense of a curved shape, adding a soft touch of white paint to highlight the centre helps. 

10. Next mount onto black card and finally the 8x8 card blank.

 

Moira