Sort of an attempt at no-line coloring. Stamp image is by Crafter's Companion and colored with my Derwent Inktense pencils.

Hello! It's day 3 of Kathy Racoosin's #TheDailyMarker30day Coloring challenge. I'm quote enjoying myself with this challenge. I've allowed myself time to color and doodle now! If only cleaning up the crafting stuff as as fun as using it. *sigh*

I used the teddy bear stamp from Technique Tuesday and colored it with my Derwent Inktense pencils. I LOVE those pencils. Super saturated and pigmented. Ridiculously awesome pencils. I went over the coloring with a small bit of water just to smooth it out.

I also doodled like I used to do in the old days! Back then, I doodled whatever was in front of me or around me. This time around (Since it's been so long), I went totally free. I stuck with teardrop, circle, and leaf shapes because that's what I gravitate towards. Used my Zig Millenium pen for the doodling.

This is my first time really trying to freehand watercolor an image. I was really inspired by Jennifer Rzasa freehand style and Dawn Woleslagle's colors and roses. Really gorgeous stuff! I started with 3 circular-ish blobs of water on the watercolor paper. Then I used some watercolor paints to start the base colorwash. They were really light and not blending as much as I'd wanted so I started to use my Derwent Inktense pencils. I touched my wet brush to the pencil lead and the color was certainly intese but it gave the images so much more depth. I kept trying to think of the way that Dawn had painted her roses. This was quite time consuming but it was a good experience. I think the hardest thing about watercolor painting in general.. is the waiting! If you don't wait for parts to dry, the rest of the picture can get muddled. Definitely had to be patient for this one.

I painted the watercolor background with Derwent Inktense pencils first and let it dry. It was a bit bigger than I'd anticipated so I decided I'd trim off most of the white space (to suit the A2 card size) and used mama elephant stamps for the flowers. I let them run off the edge in anticipation of a black mat or card base. Also, because I didn't push down on the stamp as hard as I should have, the ink didn't get into the watercolor paper's crevices. It's ok though. It kind of has a rough feel to the stamped image.

Stamp: Mama Elephant - Waterblooms
Background: Derwent Inktense Pencils
Ink: Hero Arts Black Dye, Delicata Gold