Penny Black Dahlia’s in Watercolor

Hi there and welcome!  I’ve been working on a lot of cards and although I’m quick about photographing them and posting to social media, I’m a bit slower to get a blog post written to share the details!  Yesterday I decided to paint a watercolor using the beautiful Dahlias set by Penny Black.  I began by trimming a sheet of watercolor paper down to 6X8 inches then taping off one inch on all four sides, leaving me with a 5X7 space in which to paint!  I dusted the surface with my anti-static pouch then began to stamp, then emboss with Brutus Monroe’s Gilded powder, mask and stamp more blossoms and leaves until I had an arrangement I liked.  

Next, using my Kuretake Zig Clean Color Brush markers, I started laying in the background with black, then some shades of blue, moving the ink with a wet paintbrush.  I dried with a heat tool between each layer and built up a lovely, dark base of color.  Moving on to the largest dahlia bloom, I used several shades of red and orange markers, and also a lighter brown to fill in the petals, adding water to soften and blend the ink.  

I colored the rest of the flowers using shades of orange and yellow, a little brown for shading, then a little gray for shading.  I love how vivid they are against that background even though DO they look like flowers floating in space!  😀  To finish my panel, I spattered on droplets of water then patted it dry and finally a spattering of white craft paint.  This painting makes me very happy and I can’t wait to mat and frame it!  I may keep it, but it’s more likely to be sold!  Check my etsy shop to see if it’s there in a few days!  

Here’s a final peek at the finished painting; I’m really bummed that my paper tore a bit.  I don’t know why that happened; perhaps using the heat tool so much made the painters tape really adhere more than usual.  Thank you for visiting and I hope my post encourages you to get out your watercolors or Zig markers and have some fun with them!  

 

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