Watercoloring Sketchbook Backgrounds

 It's my turn to host the Watercoloring tutorial challenge at Splitcoaststampers this week and I happened across a new to me artist (My Nature Diaries) on YouTube not too long ago where she shared background ideas in watercolor in a garden sketchbook. With this video seen here. I also had received this watercolor book for Mother's Day this year from my son so, I thought win win. Along with some handmade textured papers. 

 This does say it is 100% cotton paper and I thought why not. One thing that I really liked about her page she shared was the fact that there was also stamps and journaling mixed in with the sketched painted parts. I mainly started water coloring because, I wanted to be able to color my stamped images better or easier. and Of all the coloring mediums I have tried over the years, pencils are still high the list but, Water coloring is edging it out for the easiest one to do in a quick thing I guess. It takes a long time to build layers of color with pencils and I did not find markers to be an easy thing for me so, the water coloring even with the drying times seems faster I guess than pencils.  

So I opened it up to page two (back side of page 1) and decided to add some of this palette from Prima called Terrain ( which was also probably a gift a year or two ago ish?) and Then I clipped the other side and started a layer on it as well.

 I did add some blues to the greens thinking it would be "Sky" space, Although even in the back of my mind I was thinking I was not going to sketch anything I was either going to stamp some images that would be sketch style or wing it with a paint brush. (my book & no rules) 

 What it looked like the next morning dry.

This book pages are on the A7 size so, I dug out my scrapbooking size Misti to add this SU sketched Monarch Butterflies stamp to it, thinking I could restamp the image as needed but, this was I did not press to hard since it was not opened say in the middle of the book, I did not want to break the lid of my Misti so, it did not stamp perfectly in the center of the stamp but, I felt like it was "fix-able" with paint.

 

So I added some lunar black to the butterflies and other paints, along with some white gouache straight out of the tube ( which is another layer of texture) and then I decided to stamp this Penny Black (heart shaped leaves sprig) with some DOX iced spruce ink in the corner.

I did add some paints over the top of those leaves as they did not stamp perfectly either on the textured paper and then added in some stray grass lines and some splatters to the spaces where there were grass here. and so far, this is what it looks like. I do not get monarch butterflies in my yard and I did consider thinking about sketching some kind of a big leaf somewhere here and then adding more butterflies but, I am not really making a garden journal out of this, its more like a play book that may turn out a little better than the other books I have going on with not cotton paper that you know is something to flip back through later to see the ideas of how things worked or turned out I guess. I am debating if I want to paint in something with some Masking fluid as that was another of the ideas shown and so far I am still thinking about it. That's about it from me, if you'd like to play along with us you can find this challenge here at SCS. Thanks for stopping by. 
 

 On Wednesday AM I added some pencil lines for journaling with a water soluble pencil and then scratched on a thought I had about Milkweed Plants and Butterflies with a nib and some India Ink. what I don't know at this point is if I were to paint over those words if they will smear. I probably should have done some painting over there before the words but, such is life.