If you follow me on Instagram, or frequently check my Etsy page, you may have seen some pictures of 4 leaf stamp paintings I created this fall - 2 8"x10" paintings and 2 smaller ones. (You can find these on sale here.)
I took a lot of pictures of the process I used to create this paintings, and today I'll show you the first few steps.
First, I collected leaves from my Michigan backyard. I tried to find whole leaves that were not too dried or too curly yet, and I kept them moist and flat (by pressing them in a book with other slightly damp leaves) until I was ready to use them.
I also prepared 4 pieces of watercolor paper by marking with pencil the boundaries for an 8"x10" size. (I was hoping to get 4 8"x10"s out of this, but in the end didn't like how two of the paintings ended up.)
Then I collected my other materials - watercolor pigments, my watercolor palette, a brush, a water cup, and a bottle of masking fluid (with a shitty brush I didn't care about to use with that). The masking fluid was a couple years old and mostly congealed inside the bottle (boo!) but I tried to use it anyway, and had moderate success.
I painted a couple leaves with the masking fluid and used these leaves to "stamp" the fluid onto the paper. Because it was half congealed, a lot of it stayed on the leaf and didn't transfer.
In the photos below, you can see the masking fluid on the watercolor paper. It preserves the paper so you can paint on top of it, and I was hoping some of the leaf shapes and textures (like the leaf veins) would come out, but because the fluid was old they were more or less just blobs. I mean, they still looked okay in the background - they were just more abstract that I initially intended.
Once the masking fluid was dry, I added some red and orange to the paper as background color. I tried just flinging dots of water onto the paper, but then I got impatient and just put down whole swaths of color.
Here are some close-ups of this first red-orange wash layer, while the paint is still drying. You can see it resting on top of the masking fluid leaf blobs, where the fluid is protecting it from adhering to the page.
Then I started stamping! Holding down the leave only briefly (like you if it were a real stamp), puts down pigment but doesn't hold it in a leaf shape. To get a leaf shape, you have to press the leaf down hard, and let it sit on the paper for a few minutes so the pigment starts to dry.
In this photo, you can see the first round of red, orange, and yellow pigment stamped while I moved the leaves over to a second piece of paper to keep going.
Below are some close-ups of successful stamps, where you can actually see some of the leaf stems and veins transferred onto the paper.
I went through and did this with the red, orange, and yellow pigments for a few "rounds," moving the leaves from paper to paper and working on all four simultaneously.
Sometimes I left the leaves on the page for several hours, to get a darker/crisper leaf transfer. Once all four papers were well covered with red, orange, and yellow pigment, I let them dry.
Tomorrow I will show more pictures of how I did the rest of this process, so make sure to check back!
If you are interesting in purchasing these paintings, check out my Etsy shop here!
I took a lot of pictures of the process I used to create this paintings, and today I'll show you the first few steps.
First, I collected leaves from my Michigan backyard. I tried to find whole leaves that were not too dried or too curly yet, and I kept them moist and flat (by pressing them in a book with other slightly damp leaves) until I was ready to use them.
I also prepared 4 pieces of watercolor paper by marking with pencil the boundaries for an 8"x10" size. (I was hoping to get 4 8"x10"s out of this, but in the end didn't like how two of the paintings ended up.)
Then I collected my other materials - watercolor pigments, my watercolor palette, a brush, a water cup, and a bottle of masking fluid (with a shitty brush I didn't care about to use with that). The masking fluid was a couple years old and mostly congealed inside the bottle (boo!) but I tried to use it anyway, and had moderate success.
I painted a couple leaves with the masking fluid and used these leaves to "stamp" the fluid onto the paper. Because it was half congealed, a lot of it stayed on the leaf and didn't transfer.
In the photos below, you can see the masking fluid on the watercolor paper. It preserves the paper so you can paint on top of it, and I was hoping some of the leaf shapes and textures (like the leaf veins) would come out, but because the fluid was old they were more or less just blobs. I mean, they still looked okay in the background - they were just more abstract that I initially intended.
Once the masking fluid was dry, I added some red and orange to the paper as background color. I tried just flinging dots of water onto the paper, but then I got impatient and just put down whole swaths of color.
Here are some close-ups of this first red-orange wash layer, while the paint is still drying. You can see it resting on top of the masking fluid leaf blobs, where the fluid is protecting it from adhering to the page.
Then I started stamping! Holding down the leave only briefly (like you if it were a real stamp), puts down pigment but doesn't hold it in a leaf shape. To get a leaf shape, you have to press the leaf down hard, and let it sit on the paper for a few minutes so the pigment starts to dry.
In this photo, you can see the first round of red, orange, and yellow pigment stamped while I moved the leaves over to a second piece of paper to keep going.
Below are some close-ups of successful stamps, where you can actually see some of the leaf stems and veins transferred onto the paper.
I went through and did this with the red, orange, and yellow pigments for a few "rounds," moving the leaves from paper to paper and working on all four simultaneously.
Sometimes I left the leaves on the page for several hours, to get a darker/crisper leaf transfer. Once all four papers were well covered with red, orange, and yellow pigment, I let them dry.
Tomorrow I will show more pictures of how I did the rest of this process, so make sure to check back!
If you are interesting in purchasing these paintings, check out my Etsy shop here!
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