Art Impressions Blog: Watercolor Weekend 5-6-2023 plus NEW WATERCOLOR FOUNDATION SETS!!

Welcome to our Watercolor Weekend!

This has been a very exciting week for Art Impressions and all of the Watercolor Fans!

There were 6 new WC sets released on Wednesday.

Did you SEE??!!

These sets can be purchased individually or as a
bundle with all 6 that will save you some money.

Be sure to hop on over to the website and check out the new releases

as well as the Deal of the Week and On Sale! categories.

Now, let's see what our amazing Design Team has created to inspire

you this week. We're starting things off with Diane.

Hello my Ai Watercolor friends, welcome to another Watercolor Weekend! I am so excited to be sharing with you a tri-fold card using a stamp from the brand new Scenic Foundations release! Bonnie really knocked it out of the park with these new Scenic Foundations stamps. She has taken all the guesswork out of creating a scene – and there are so many fun scenes to choose from! Today I am using set 5746 – SF Village. I just love this little village scene, especially the shop and signboard. I chose to make mine a hair salon.

To begin, I inked the scenic foundations stamp in 969/565 and stamped off before stamping onto my Canson XL Watercolor Paper. I pulled out the color from the lines of the stamped images with a damp brush to soften and add shadows, using a #4 brush in larger areas and #1 brush in smaller areas. Next I brushed in a bit of sky using a watery mix of 526. Using a pencil, I lightly sketched in a few lines for the hills in the background between the buildings and painted the hills with 249. Next I stamped in all the flowers and foliage. For the tall thin bush in the pot to the left of the orange building, I inked just the top of the salvia stamp from 4052 – Flower Set in 177 and softened and pulled out the color with a damp brush. For the trailing vines in the pots and window boxes I inked just the tip of the larger mini leaves stamp from 5372 WC Mini Foliage. Next I added flowers by inking the tiny dots from 5009 – WC Mini Flower Set in 856/993/565. Using a damp brush I softened the flowers and foliage. I used the bullet tip of each flower color to dot in a bit of detail to the flowers. With a light mix of 565/969 I added shadows and contours to the pots and came back in with a little more 565. I also used this same mix for the chimneys. For the roof tops and overhang above the door, I used 969 and a little 565 to darken the brown. For the signboard, I painted the frame in 977 and the chalkboard in N25. Details to the sign were added by using a very fine liner brush and Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bleed Proof White. For the cobblestone street, I lightly drew in random stone shapes with a pencil. I painted around the cobblestones with a wash of 969 and added a bit of color to the stones with 565 and 969. For the blue building, I used 526 for the front trim, awning, and door. For the shadowed side of the building I used a mix of 526 and 565. For the orange building, I used 912 for the main building areas and a mix of 912 and 993 for the trim and flower box. For the green building, I used 177 for the main building areas and a 177/249 for the shadowed areas, trim and the door. All of the window panes were painted with 565. I added shadows under the awning and overhang with 565. With a very fine (.05) black micron pen, I added details to the hanging sign and door handle on the green door. I also added in details on the roof tops, cobblestones, and signboard frame with a brown TwinTone.

To learn how to make a tri-fold window card, Jennifer McGuire has a fantastic video tutorial found HERE. For the tri-fold card, I cut out a rectangle slightly smaller than the window die (5543 – Journal Template Die Set) from the card front, using a rectangle die. Next I glued two white die cut window frames over the opening on the front and back of the card front. I die cut the village scene painting using the rectangle die from 5543 and matted with black cardstock. The painting was then adhered to the inside flap. In the center of the card, I added a white cardstock panel for writing a note. I used the flag banner from 5543 to die cut the sentiment on the front of the card.

How fun was that? I absolutely love the new Scenic Foundations stamps, but this village set just might be my favorite. There are just so many ways you can change up this scene to match your needs. As always, if you paint this scene, please be sure to tag us on social media. We love to see your work! Until next time, Happy Painting!

We also have a bonus card from Diane because she's loving the new releases so much!
5744 – SF Picket Fence

Next up we have Tricia who also has two cards for you.

Hello Watercolor Fans, can you believe it is May already? The new stamps are out and I can’t wait to start creating with them. I decided to do a simple glass vase bouquet this weekend. I used just 3 stamps, two from the original foliage and flowers sets.

To start off, I inked the bottom of the vase (you can use any of the containers to do this, I love doing this with the mini containers), with light blue and stamped it off, you really want the line to be barely there so it looks like glass. Before adding more color, I like to stamp in my foliage along the top of the vase, try not to go too high. I used the original vine inked with green. Next, I moved onto the daisy bunch from the original flower set, inked with 606 and the long stem inked with 725.

Once that was all stamped, I added water to all the foliage and then the flowers. I then moved along to the vase. I added a small amount of clear water to the vase, then dropped in some light color blue color along the sides so it bleeds toward the middle. I also added some green for the stems.

Lastly, I added a small amount of brown beneath the vase and lightly into the vase as there would be a reflection. I signed and dated it.

For the card, I added my painting, cut out with my rectangle die, to a mat made with Gina K Designs card stock. I added that to my white card base. Using my MISTI, I added the sentiments with Gina K Design black ink.

Thank you so much for spending time with us today, we can’t wait to see what incredible creations you are doing. I hope you have a crafty day!

Lastly, we have a gorgeous scene from Karen who is battling a broken finger on her painting hand and she STILL managed to create this little masterpiece!

Hello Ai Watercolour fans!

I'm sharing one of the new Scenic Foundations sets that was released this week. Here is 5745 Stone Bridge:

I coloured the entire image (it's all one stamp!) in Tombow #969/565 and stamped onto my Canson XL Watercolour paper. Since the image is rectangular, but not defined by an outside line, I used a pencil to sketch in the outer rectangle shape so that I knew where to confine my painting. After pulling out the colour with a damp brush, I began painting the house, layering # 992/977 on the roof, bench and pathway, adding extra layers of colour on the shadier areas. I decided that my house would be white, so added layers of 565 to create the shaded sides, keeping the brighter sides pure white, and I used it to paint in the windows, and add shadows under the roof lines. I used tones of warm and cool grays N65 and N57 to paint the chimney and stone bridge in a bit of a mottled fashion, keeping the darker tones to the lower side of each stone, which would be more shadowed. 565 was added in for extra shading, and used to paint the under side of the bridge.

With the small dot flowers and greenery sprig from 5009 - WC Mini Flower Set, I added the garden around the house, using 565/993/177, and used 993 to paint the bench. The house needed a pop of colour, so layers of #856 gave me a red door, which becomes the focal point of the scene. I used #177 to paint the faraway hill, and #126 the closer grass, and used both colours along with the foliage stamp from 5372 - WC Mini Foliage to create the leaves on the tree. A light wash of #493 was painted in the sky, leaving white areas that became clouds, and a darker wash created the stream. I erased the lines defining my rectangle, matted my scene on some green cardstock and adhered it to the pretty plaid from the 5606 - Harvest Journal PP. I cut out two of the Spring die from 5719 - FB Fence and Journal Set in a lighter green cardstock, and adhered it to the bottom of my scene.