Ink Stains: 2016 Watercolor Calendar

Today I'm back with the watercolor calendar page for March. This is one of my favorite techniques for watercolors - I think it's because of the randomness of it. You get totally different looks every time that I really enjoy.

Since it's for March I am working with yellows and greens in honor of St. Patrick's Day but of course you can use whatever colors you would like. I have found that using 3 or more shades of each color works best with this technique. The layers of color help to create the depth we're going for. Remember watercolor is all about building up layers.

Start off by wetting the upper half of your watercolor paper with water.

Paint the lightest color of yellow first - just swish it around, the water will help blend it. Hold the paper up and tap it a bit on your work surface to help it run down the paper.

While the paint is still wet, add a second and if desired a third color of yellow to the top of the card.

Again, hold it upright and tap it to get your colors to run down the panel. Continue to add additional layers of paint until you're happy with the design.

Now rotate the panel so the first color is on the bottom.

Repeat the process using shades of green starting off with the lightest color first.

And here's how my card panel turned out!

I love how you can see all of the different layers and how they blended together.

Now you're going to have bits of paint that drip onto your work surface. I like to keep some plain tags handy to pick up all the stray bits - they are perfect for ATC backgrounds, note tags, stamped images and more!

So I went on to create my calendar page using this technique. When I started in on the green I actually got this really cool formation that I liked so I stopped there. It's actually fewer layers than the card panel example but I liked the look.

Next I added a bit of stamping.

And finished it off by flicking on a touch of gold watercolor. If your set of watercolors doesn't include gold you could use a gold Gelatos, watered down gold acrylic paint, etc.