Taylored Expressions: Leafy Backgrounds

I've been doing quite a bit of playing with watercolors lately. It's been a difficult medium for me to embrace because I have to let go of some control which is not my best thing! You have to be able to embrace random puddles, splatters and swooshes of color but generally I want to know where everything ends up.  Having said that, there really are fabulous uses that work even for me (and as I play more, I find that I am becoming more and more comfortable)!  I like a simple wash of color in the background.  I like painting in a heat embossed image (where the embossing holds the color in one place).  And it turns out I love creating nature scenes - because random works for that!

As I was playing around with Taylored Expressions new Liquid Watercolors, I found a way to create leafy backgrounds for those nature scenes.


I did it with a plastic sandwich bag.  If you lightly paint some color on a plastic bag, it beads up - then use the bag to smoosh the color in the area you want on a dry piece of watercolor cardstock. You get leaves!!  I did some leaves in Peapod, then I added some Lemon Meringue to another drop of Peapod to get yellower leaves and smooshed that on. Finally I loosely painted a light wash of that yellower green over the tree tops and a light wash of Chocolate Truffle mixed with some Candy Corn to get the ground. (I love that  you can mix to get the color you want!).  And of course, a watered down wash of Cookie Monster for the sky.


I pulled out some of my all-time favorite nature products from Taylored Expressions to finish up the scene.


I am really looking forward to playing around with an autumn scene using this technique!  I love that I can embrace the random look of watercolors in a controlled way!!

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