This was a fun practice. I was intrigued by Carla Sonheim’s free tutorial. Looks like a fun way to make flowers. She uses watercolors with gesso and pencil. First, you lay down patches of color. After that layer has dried, you cover each circle with gesso, “drawing” designs in the wet gesso. She suggests using the end of a brush. I used a small embossing stylus.
I knew I was going to count this as one of my daily pieces. But really it was more for fun, and to play. I made a few mistakes. I should have used darker colors for the blooms. I chose two shades of blue, shiraz, yellow, a flesh tone and green gold. There isn’t enough contrast with some of the colors and the gesso. I also need to expand my floral marking alphabet. Maybe I should have looked at zentangles for ideas.
I used a pencil to make marks, as she does in the instructions. But it was too light. You can see below, some of the marks just disappear. So I used the same Inktense watercolor pencil I had used to draw the hexagons. I wet some random areas of the lines. The marks in the final piece are more noticeable. But they look more messy to me than artistic.
I had fun, and it was meditative. I didn’t make a plan or think about composition. Next time I can use what I have learned and build a better bouquet. 🙂
