2017 #5 Ode to Ochre {by Lauren Hatwell}

2017 Topic 5: Blue and Ochre

A gorgeous post here from Lauren with lots of interactive loveliness! She always manages to create something a bit unusual, and she's done it again! Enjoy!
 

Hi everyone Lauren here again and, as always, it's lovely to be here on the PA blog tonight with my take on our Blue and Ochre challenge. 

Blue, green and blue-y green (or green-y blue, even) are my absolute favourite colours, as you may well have guessed already. I like blue in all it's forms and never tire of it. Conversely, I always think of yellow as one of my least favourite colours. Once I started playing, though, I realised I actually use it an awful lot without even realising it. I soon understood that I couldn't do without it.  This little exercise has made me realise just what a useful colour it is. In fact I think I am learning to LOVE IT!

I do actually use Ochre an awful lot, but mostly for shading. It works beautifully, both in natural schemes for hair, fur etc and, to add depth to brighter colour schemes too.  Ochre makes the perfect companion for blue and, when mixed with blue, it makes the most delicious shades of green and blue/green. Try mixing a dab of Haystack with a dab of Mermaid and you get a gorgeous shade of pale green. Add it to a rich blue/green like Beach Hut and it will ramp up the colour enough to knock your socks off. Stamp an ochre shade over a blue shade and you'll get a gorgeous green. It's a really versatile colour.

So, though you might look at my project and think "where's the Ochre?";  It is, actually, pretty much everywhere in some way, shape or form.

I've been dying to use Elena's gorgeous flowers and monsters with stamps from Tracy Scott, Emma Godfrey and Kim Dellow.  They all chime so beautifully; it's a marriage made in heaven...just like blue and ochre.

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I started, as I always do, by picking out a small palette of  Fresco Finish paint colours to suit my scheme. I do this just because it's an easy way to eyeball the colours to see if they're really what I want and check they go together. I chose Haystack, Pumpkin, Brown Shed (light ochre, ochre and burnt ochre), together with Mermaid, Beach Hut and south Pacific for the blues. (The pink was a bit of an accident (that will teach me not to clean my stencils properly!? tsk tsk) but actually looks okay AND made a beautifully pink-y orange when I mixed it with Haystack, so not a complete loss though, admittedly, slightly off piste. I used Candy Floss, Bubblegum and Bougainvillea)

I love making houses. This one is a mixture of Heavy Smoothy and Greyboard. The base painting was done like a masterboard, building up layers of colour with stencils  and masks.

(PS036/ PS046)

... and stamping until I was happy with the overall effect. This sort of technique is perfect for playing around with colour mixing. You never know exactly what you're going to get until you get to the end, but you can see that the blue and the yellow have mixed to make lots of different shades of colour throughout. I really like the way the colours change again each time you add stamping or stencilling.

Emma's quote from Alice in wonderland was perfect for this project.

Now for the fun bit... adding the detail. I coloured and cut out my characters in the usual way, puffing the paper and glazing with PaperArtsy Gloss Glaze on the outside of the house. I love the way Kim Dellow's flower circles look like windows. All I had to do was add a dab of colour with a combination of Crackle Glaze and Glossy Accents to give the effect of glass. The door and window frames were made with the stem stamp from Tracy's ETS06

Look who's inside... I've used the Haystack to create a sort of yellowish skin shade for my little Zinski monster. 

It is brilliant for skin tones. I used Candy Floss with Haystack to create the deeper shade and softened it a bit with vanilla for the lighter skin shade. I've also used Bougainvillea with Haystack in the flower centres on the left of the door to add a nice pop of colour. It's a lovely combination and makes the yellow seem brighter to me. On the right, I've used Burnt Ochre (Brown Shed) in the flower centres.

Open up the front of the house and you find a secret garden. I'm still madly in love with Elena's "cake flowers" and quirky monsters. They give everything a magical, other-worldly feel that I always want to bring to life. Tracy Scott's border stamp from ETS01 is also perfect for a little garden wall. I haven't puffed the paper on the inside of the house because I wanted everything to fold away neatly when you close the door.  

I made do with a simple concertina effect background this time, but I will definitely be researching techniques for making pop up features in my projects going forward. I love the idea of everything springing to life when you unfold it. 

It seems silly, but I do often forget to mix colours and see what else I can get out of them. It's so easy to fall into the trap of using what you see in front of you, particularly if you're short of time. I'm used to adding white to ting and black to shade, or picking a light, medium and dark shade to add depth and light to my colouring, but there is so much more to colour than that. This was such a nice way to remind myself what is possible when you think slightly laterally and spend a little time playing with colour. Of course it's only the tip of the iceberg. I used Distress ink in Fossilised Amber to stamp the words because I wanted the letters to change colour. If I'd stamped them in the new Oxide Ink they would have stayed yellow. I could also have used Infusions in Lemoncello or Golden Sands to add further interest. They both have a hint of ochre in them too.

Lauren Hatwell
Marvelous Mechanical Mouse Organ

Wow what a feast of stamps you have incorporated into this project!Love all your clear windows, and how you  have pulled so many stamps into such a cohesive project! Thankyou! ~ Leandra

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