Showing posts with label postcards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postcards. Show all posts

Monday, June 29, 2015

Lefty Art: Painting With the Other Hand




If there is enough time on my lunch hour, sometimes I pull out a few art supplies and paint, or draw, or doodle. The other day I did a lot of typing and graphic design in the morning, and my shoulder was aching. But I still wanted to relax and do some art to clear my head. So, I decided to use my left hand—since I am a righty, it was a little tricky. With the left brain/right brain idea in mind, I thought that switching hands would help clear my head.

I used some watercolor pencils on standard white cardstock and scribbled, then used a brush and water to pull the color around. I also dipped the pencils in water and drew with them and then wet the page and drew on the wet surface. It not a masterpiece, but it was therapeutic, and the colors were pretty and soothing.

I took the scribble piece home, then selected a 4” x 6” section that I liked, and trimmed it. I enhanced it a little with a Scribe-All White Marking Pencil and a little Faber-Castell: Stampers Big White Brush Pen. The Vonnegut quote was printed on Avery clear mailing labels. The quote seemed to go along with a piece that was created left handed. The Avery labels have a sticky back so the quote adhered nicely.  I ran the edges over a sepia distress ink pad to give an aged look, and also added some gloss medium over the whole thing because I didn’t want to take a chance on the quote falling off when it traveled across the country to its destination.
 
 
To strengthen the postcard, I used a reject/unfinished piece of watercolor paper for the back, decorating it with washi tape and zetti-ish harlequin paper.

Friday, November 8, 2013

No-Theme Postcards

Some people love and need prompts to spark their creativity. Most of the time prompts just annoy me, and I find them alternately confining and confounding. So, when I have a chance to do a “no theme” exchange, it is a chance to work on my own ideas that have been in the back of my mind or scribbled in a sketchbook. It is also a chance to rummage through my boxes and bins to find and use little tidbits I have been hoarding that were too pretty to throw away, and unfinished pieces begging to be completed.

On a trip to a great little store in NY called The Ink Pad http://www.theinkpadnyc.com/, I purchased a stamp that reminded me of William Morris’ textile designs. I tested the stamp on some coquille watercolor paper a month or so earlier, then got super busy and put the work aside. I decided to fill in the white space with watercolor, watercolor pencils & markers, and was happy with the result. I then looked for postcard sized 4” x 6” backgrounds for the mini watercolors. I found three: a leftover piece from a pink recycled tissue paper and fabric collage, a green stamped cardstock background leftover from some “jonquil” themed ATCs I made over a year ago, and part of a big blue watercolor that I over-stamped with a white circular texture that I had been saving for a special project. I wanted to add texture, so I attached the colorful mini Morris watercolor by zigzag it to the various backgrounds.