Hello everyone, its nice to be back after my break last month. So for my April make for the Country View Crafts monthly Challenge I made a card, so no surprises there then lol. Don’t forget to follow the guidelines on the blog to be in with a chance to win a voucher to spend in the shop, and they are for this month, use spring colours.
Before I show you how I made this card i have some news to share, which I am very excited about. Following from completing my masters in illustration last year, over the Christmas holidays I was commissioned to illustrate a children’s picture book, which is well underway. It’s due to be finished by the end of July, and I’m happy to report I’m well on track. My other news is since January I have had several commissions using my designs on apparel and mugs which I also supply, ive also been commissioned to do a caricature as a leaving present for one of our local companies in Penrith. So as you can imagine I am very busy. What with the therapyIi provide two days a week and now all these commissions I feel I’m working full time again.
okay onto my card
So this is how I created this card which is very simple, but looks really effective. I used Arteza Gouache Archer and Olive acrylograph acrylic pens and Karin deco brush metallic brush pens.
So I set the seen, lit my candle, put on some relaxing music and gathered my supplies. At this point I didn’t know what I was going to do and felt i’d just let the art flow. So I started just laying some blobs of colour down. I mixed up a few colours that I wanted to use and stuck to those colours.
And added some more, by which time I knew I was doing some abstract flowers and so added some leaves. I used two colours of leaves to add more interest
I dried this with my heat gun thoroughly and then had a cup of coffee to decide what to do next. I wanted some texture so using the metallic brush pens I added small flicks which I made look like tiny leaves and thought it was perfect. I didnt do it to every flower as I wanted some visual contrast in the textures so using the acrylic pens I added marks to simulate petals. And for even more contrast I used the acrylic pens on the darker leaves to add the veins And dots on the lighter leaves.
So now I’d finished the painting I that it needed a background colour but as I’m not good at adding that around the flowers etc I decided to add it digitally. I took a very clear photo and took it into photoshop and removed the coloured areas from its existing background. I saved this as a png file and then took it into Procreate where I could add a textures background, which I coloured light gray. I made this slightly smaller than the original size to add a layered effect.
I then sized this to fit an A5 card printed this off onto printable watercolour paper. I mounted it onto a gold Matt layer and then onto the card. Using metallic vinyl and my Cricut Joy I made a sentiment to add to the card to finish.
Let’s take another look.
Illustration Design Craft 