Thursday 27 July 2017

Summer Holiday

This page was completed with two challenges in mind; Art Journal Prompts Week 30: Summer and the July Claritystamp challenge: Summer Holiday.  I have therefore only used Claritystamp stamps and masks.

As it is the summer holiday and I have all the time in the world, I really took my time with this page and used some of the techniques practised at the Clarity retreat.  I started by choosing a selection of suitable stamps (although I ended up not using the stamp and post mark as you will see).  I masked off an area of my page (19.5cm x 18.5cm) using the Clouds mask, and the moon and mountains mask which came with the Summer Shades stamp set.
I used my blending mat and Speedball brayer and Stonewashed Adirondack ink to create the sky, moving my cloud mask as I went.  This made the sky darker on the left and lighter on the right where the sun is.  Before I removed the mountain mask, I stamped the large Clarity moon and cloud stamp over the area left white by the moon mask.  For this I used a second generation of Majestic Blue Versafine ink.
The sky was then masked off, a piece of copy paper was torn to create a hill mask and the area in between was coloured with the brayer, in the same way as the sky using Terra Cotta and Ginger Adirondack inks.  A make up sponge dragged additional colour off the mask to create a shadow along the top of the mountains.
The other half of the torn copy paper covered the mountains and a second hill mask was created and added lower down the page.  This time I used Oregano Adirondack ink with a little Ginger at the bottom, to echo the colour of the mountains.
At this point I decided to add a touch of  Neocolor II watercolour pastels, and use my water brush with the Adirondack ink from the blending mat, to create a more textured effect to the mountains and hills.
For the foreground I used Juniper, Oregano, Pesto and Mushroom Adirondack inks and a mixture of brayering, stencil brushes and water brush, along with reusing the copy paper hill mask.
Once I was happy with the background it was time to add some more stamped images.  I used my large Misti stamp platform throughout this stage, in case I needed to re ink any of the stamps to create a more solid image in front of quite a dark background.  I started with the two palm trees from the Summer Shades stamp set, stamped in Library Green Archival ink.
Having established where the glasses were going to sit, I next added the little girl on the swing in Black Soot archival ink and the car and caravan using Espresso Brown Archival ink both from the Tim Holtz Archival Palette.
The frames of the glasses were stamped in Versamark ink and heat embossed using detail black embossing powder.  This stamped really easily first time, creating a shiny finish and another layer of texture.
I added the 'Summer' stamp which was from the Clarity New Design Club in 2016 and the two smallest balloons (there is also a larger one in the same design) using Black Soot Archival ink.  I also used one of the grasses from the Wee Grasses stamp set in the foreground (Library Green Archival ink) and the teenie weenie version of the same stamp within the right hand frame of the glasses, masking off where needed.
It only remained to colour the balloons using Neocolor II pastels and also the open sections of the word 'Summer', using a water brush to blend out the colours.  I also added a very light coat of yellow ink over the sun to remove the starkness of the white against the sky.  I am so happy with the finished page, especially as I was able to practise what I learned on Sunday and Monday.

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