Watercoloring a Simple snowy bird scene

 This week Linda is sharing this video seen here on YouTube to do a winter scene with a bird on a branch, and she uses a piece of yarn to get the frosty looking branch effect. I have not crochet with yarn in a lot of years but, I have a tiny stash of fancy fibers to tie on gift tags and found a piece of chenille. ( it did not work by the way) so, if you have some yarn maybe try a different one.

I started by cutting a piece of Arches cold press with the largest die in the Mama Elephant Deckled edge frames set and using Indigo & black as a color wash for the background, got the chenille damp, sprinkle don salt, layered a little more water on the string and walked away. ( it's been snowing off and on here the last few days and so, the drying time is in the hours and hours stage. 

When I removed the chenille I had this. So, there was no damp under where it was I may have waited too long to pull it up. I did let this sit overnight and all day while I was at work today.

So, I grabbed a damp brush and tried to make a line of where I thought the string was originally for a branch, added a hint of brown to that and then did the bird based on what I remembered from watching the video a few days ago, My bird sketch I did make a letter D with a bump for the head but, the space for the tail I had painted over so, I did spend a bunch of time adding brown paint to the tail area.

After adding more paint to the bird I decided to splatter the whole thing with some Dr. PH Martins bleed proof white. and then (this is not in this shot) I did drag the brush along the outside of the stitched line on the diecut to take away some of the sky color washed background there. I am not so sure that was any success as of yet but, I did try that. 

 After that dried I did use a piece of textured Bazzill for a mat and then roughed up the edges of that. dug around in my blue ribbons box and found another piece of yard that came from "Fibers by the yard" a long time ago, wrapped it where the painted branch was supposed to be and its mostly floating there with a couple of micro glue dots in a couple of spots. I decided to use an premade card base of Strathmore watercolor paper in an A7 and used it for the base. And I have not decided on the sentiment as of yet so right now this is where I stopped with this one. if you'd like to play along with us, you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by.