One-Layer Simplicity #30: August Art

Greetings a little bit earlier than expected! With all the chaos of the last few weeks, I forgot that August is my month to host the One-Layer Simplicity Challenge. It's a good thing we got back into town after a very short few days in Cleveland in time for me to make a card and get the challenge posted.

Anyway, when we got back into town, I happily hit my craft space and whipped up this card. Got it right. The. Very. First. Time. And it turned out. Exactly. The. Way. I. Wanted. It. To. Turn. Out.

This. Never. Happens!

Well, until today. And I think this looks pretty darn good!

The challenge this month is August Art, and there are three ways to play. #1 Use art-themed stamps. #2 Be inspired by a piece of art. #3 Use fine-art supplies and/or techniques.

I combined both #1 and #3. The sentiment is a blissfully true quotation from Picasso about art, the base is watercolor paper, and the coloring is a watercolor wash created by coloring the butterfly with watercolor pencils and swiping it with a damp watercolor wash brush.

To make the card, I masked the card base (made of 140lb. cold press watercolor paper) and stamped half the butterfly from Hero Arts Antique Engravings in Hero Arts intense black ink. Using a stamp positioner, I placed the sentiment (a wood-mounted rubber stamp from Inkadinkado) beside the butterfly.

After coloring in the image lightly with Prismacolor Copenhagen and Derwent sap green watercolor pencils, I wet a large wash brush in water, dabbed it on a Bounty paper towel to remove most of the water, and dragged it across the butterfly a few times to blend the pencil.

Tip: Use Bounty paper towels because they don't mess up your project with lint.

I considered keeping the watercolor on the right side inside the lines of the butterfly and swiping out to the left, but in the end I decided that having a relatively (though not perfectly) straight line on the right made more sense in the space, as if the color itself is washing from the artful sentiment rather than from the butterfly itself. That feels more unifying to me.

And that's all I have to say about that.

By the way, if you're ever in Cleveland, I recommend eating dinner at Lola (Michael Symon's restaurant) and breakfast at Jack Frost's Donuts. Both produce culinary works of art.

Click over to the OLS Challenge blog to play along!

Supplies
stamps: Inkadinkado sentiment, Hero Arts Antique Engravings butterfly
paper: Fluid cold press 140lb watercolor 
ink: Hero Arts intense black
accessories: Derwent and Prismacolor watercolor pencils, watercolor wash brush, post-it for mask