My Struggling-Artist's Attempt at Jo's Dreamy Watercolors

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.

Last Watercoloured Background Zentangle

 

Last Watercoloured Background Zentangle (for now)



Watercolor Zentangle Peace

So this is it for the watercoloured backgrounds for now.  I still have a couple left, but I’ve put them aside to focus on the new challenges.  I’ll probably incorporate them with a challenge tangle at some point.

Here’s what I’ve learned from doing the watercolour challenge

#1 – Don’t use cheap watercolour pencils.  They wind up looking more like crayon marks when they dry.

#2  - Microns tend to bleed a bit on the watercoloured tiles.

#3 – Don’t lightly use a  black watercolour pencil for the background – it winds up just looking like the tile got dirty (see example on my peace sign above)

#4 – I’ve mentioned it before, and thanks to Eni we in the shading fb group were given a heads-up on these 2 points: Let your watercolour dry completely (24 hours) before zentangling it and put the drying pieces between waxed paper and some heavy books to flatten it out. If you know of a better way to make stop the tiles from curving and curling with the watercolour, please let me know! Even with the books and waxed paper mine still curve and curled a bit.

That’s all folks! On to the next challenge!

Watercolor Narwal Zentangle

Second Watercolor for Challenge



Watercolor Narwal Zentangle

 It’s a shame the background color isn’t coming through as clearly in the pics as I see them.  But check that out! I did narwal voluntarily without prompting! Still haven’t quite nailed it but whateve. It was good practice.  Loving the grey copic markers for shading.

Before shading Pic (almost forgot)

First Watercolour Challenge

 

First Watercolour Challenge

Watercolor Zentangle Garden Shaded

 

This is my first tile for Eni’s FB grop challenge of using a watercolor background.  This has been a pretty fun challenge so far.  I’ve got a few tiles painted and ready to go.  I followed Eni’s advice and let them dry for 24 hours between waxed paper with heavy books to flatten them out but they still curled a little.  I have no other ideas on how to flatten them, other than to get heavier books :D

I also noticed that the microns tend to bleed a bit with the painted base.  Not sure if others noticed had that issue.  It isn’t a MAJOR issue, but one worth noting.

In this piece I used red and purple watercolor pencils and microns, with copic grey markers for shading.

Figured I'd also add the other watercolor backgrounds I made up and set to dry.