Watercoloring with Stencils and Markers

Well, there’s no cheating in art, and that’s a good thing because this combination of tools and supplies is darned near foolproof if you want to watercolor without actually watercoloring! 

I took a class with a friend on Saturday morning. We want to get to know each other better, and playing with craft supplies is one thing we definitely share. I thought the class would be … you know, just another project. I was not prepared to be so WOW-ed! What fun it was, and I’m pretty astounded at the results considering how it was done. 

A bit of stenciling with daubers and Memento Dye-Ink pads for a less boring background. The inkpad says the ink is water-resistant when dry. I say it is pretty near permanent when you can flood a paper with water 10 minutes later and it stays without running!

I’m going to have to get me one of those brick stencils — maybe I’ll learn how to use it straight. I already grabbed a fleur-de-lis stencil. I love the way it looks in the soft gray for Mr. Bird’s background. (Heads up, I got obsessed with the sparkly reflections while taking pics, and the bird panel isn’t finished yet. You’ll see odd-colored blank area on the left below. )

Then — this is the clever part, for you “I can’t draw” people like me — you use water-based markers to COLOR.IN.A.STENCIL.IMAGE. 

Yup. Bird: stencil. Spray of buds: stencil. Flowers: stencil x 3 with handdrawn stems.

It is kind of like doing a coloring book project, except you can shift the stencil around to compose your own picture. AND there are no lines unless you add them later. AND you can add two or even three colors in each section of the stencil. In fact, you should! 

I used three in the berries (the lightest color barely shows, and only in some of them) and two colors in the leaves…

Are you excited yet? The best part is next: take a wet watercolor brush and do that paint-with-water thing like the kids’ activity book pages. I used to tape those up in the bathtub and toss a handful of paintbrushes into the bathwater :)

The point for us grownups is to move and blend the colors, shift it outside the lines. But not too much, or in awkward splashy stripes, just sayin’ ;) Suddenly those marker-colored areas look like intentional, vivid watercolor art!

Add some hand-drawn stems with the markers if you want. Wet the whole project to add some blur if you want. I did both with my orange flowers.

Do some playing around with the background if you want, like I did on Mr. Bird. Add some fine-point black scribbles and outlines if you want. I made myself put the pen down before I went too crazy! Lots of ways to personalize your project…

Then bring it all together with a splatter of metallic watercolor paint. We used this particular US Artquest metallic watercolor; it is so strongly pigmented and sparkly it works well for these accents. Thanks for sharing, Karen!

Don’t use a water-brush-pen for this part. Pretty sure you would be less than thrilled with the results since the class supply list was quite specific about bringing a regular brush! The wetter the brush, the bigger the splatters. I went crazy on Mr. Bird with an almost empty brush to give him a hummingbird costume of super-fine spatters  after doing the regular layer :) 

I liked splattering selectively with two different colors. Just another level of complexity (aka, can’t leave well enough alone!) The bird has a sage green and purple; the orange flowers have red and copper, which I also painted the centers of the flowers with; the purple buds are only done with purple.

I have plans to finish off this bird with some fine-point marker doodling down that left edge of blank olive paint. I know it’s not that attractive right now!!!

You know what is really interesting when going to a class like this? There is the table full of supplies — everything is available to everyone. But each student turns out something so different! I love how unique we all are :)

Betcha can’t guess what my favorite part of my work was! ;) 

So! Much! Fun! So was crafting with my friend and the two-hour lunch we did afterwards :) Caffeine, Thai food, and talk of food and other interests — Friends are good!

Happy art-ing!

Gail