My Struggling-Artist's Attempt at Jo's Dreamy Watercolors
This is gonna be a long and involved post – because wowzas! So
much to say about this!
First off, Jo Flaherty, what an amazing artist! She’s found
her “voice” (that’s what we say in the writing community) in art. She makes the most beautifully whimsical
pieces that are eye-catching and soothing at the same time, as well as
completely unique! Eni Oken featured her
as an artist this week in the Shading Zentangle FB group and Jo was kind enough
to show us how she does her work. What a
wonderful pair of women to bring us this challenge and share their artsy ways!
Like I said, I’ve admired Jo’s pieces for quite a while now.
I was so stoked to give this a try.
Sadly, I didn’t have the materials Jo uses, and had no means of getting
them. But did that stop me? Heck no.
I have distress inks, and I love them, but they are the
cubed versions you can see below. Not
ideal for this type of project. Or so I thought. I wanted
so badly to use their color palette that I figured I’d get creative. First, I needed something to smudge the
distress inks on… I couldn’t get what
the kit suggests, or other artists suggest, so I looked around my kitchen, and
came up with nothing. I sat on Yes the foil that keeps my ciggies fresh in
their little packs, and I dug them out and flattened them. A few tests later and I realized they were
perfect for smudging and diluting the distress inks! WIN!
my couch
and sighed… then looked over at my cigarette pack (I know, I know, smoking is
bad, but let’s focus here). I spotted the tin foil.
Then I needed to wash my brush after every color. Yes, my
one brush. With the distress inks I only needed a bit of water to clean the
brush. I was not going to walk into the
bathroom or kitchen every few minutes… so I looked around. I drink a lot of bottled water, and with
bottled water comes bottle caps. So
bottle caps with a few drops of water became my diluting and cleaning station.
It may be makeshift, but in a pinch, this proves that if you can't get the tools you need, you can work with the tools you have - with a bit of imagination.
Alas, here it is. Many hours of work and layering and more
layering later, with tin foil palettes, only 4 different distress inks, 1
brush, a bunch of bottle caps, some microns and a gelly roll white pen and I
have my finished “dreamy” piece.
Thank you Jo and Eni!
And as always,
Be kind – to yourself, to the earth and to others.
Line art which I obviously almost entirely forgot to take a pic of.
