2023 Topic 5 : Tinged Blue {by Autumn Clark} with Kay Carley stamps

Hi everyone it's Autumn Clark from SewPaperPaint here with you today.  I am such a fan of Kay Carley's stamps and am always delighted to get to share a creation using them.  

I'm equally excited about this color mixing topic.  These days its more practical than ever to explore color theory and mix up paint colors, thus stretching our art supplies further.  What better way to start than to explore "tints"  Mixing any color with white will create various 'tints' to lighten the core hue, in this case Surf's Up. 

As was explained in the Topic Introduction, Surf's Up is the color all bloggers will be using this topic so you can see how one color can be edited in many directions without compromising the hue. If you want to brush up on the idea of color tinting, then go brush up your understanding and read the topic introduction. It is packed with details of tints, shades, tone and saturation.

  

As I said, for this topic we are working primarily with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic in Surf's Up.  I decided to create an impressionistic background to show off the various tints I created with the white, Cloud 9 and really enjoyed adding in some favorite Kay Carley stamps.  I hope it inspires you today to mix up some tints of your own and have a play!

I always purchase odd sized canvases when I come across them and have had a couple of long skinny canvases in my stash for some time, waiting for just the right project.  Quite often, I begin my projects by sketching out the finished design.  This helps me get from point A to point B without being distracted.

Once I had my design concept, I grabbed some color.  I have to say, my most beloved Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic is Cloud 9.  It's the perfect shade of white for me and ends up in 90% of all that I do.  What a perfect mate it is for Surf's Up!

I pulled out my trusty, crusty paint palette and gradually added more and more Cloud 9 to a base amount of Surf's Up.  I spritzed the paint surface with water occasionally to keep the paints from drying out while I worked.  

I mixed my colors and and painted out the results on a scrap of paper.  

As you can see, the result is a beautiful ombre of color.  

I really wanted to add texture to my canvas by adding each color as a blob and building layer upon layer so that the top of the canvas would be lighter than the bottom.  This way, the tint was visible not only in the mixed colors themselves, but the tint would help create the illusion of depth in the finished project. 

You can see, I literally painted blobs of paint all over, what a fun, therapeutic way to create!  As a bonus, the paint dries with a great texture.

 

At this point, I was really excited and decided to get to stamping!  I started with PaperArtsy Eclectica³ stamp set 6 by Kay Carley (EKC06).  

I watercolored my images in varying depths of each color by adding different amounts of water. This would let the white backgrounds show and create various versions of the same color to allow for different levels of color saturation. You can see the variations within my colored images.

I only wanted to use the grasses from PaperArtsy Eclectica³ stamp set 47 by Kay Carley (EKC47), and gave them a light wash.  

I did a LOT of fussy cutting and carefully mounted all of my flowers onto my painted canvas BEFORE I had stamped my focal sentiment, also from EKC47.  And then I smudged it!  Imagine my horror!  Luckily, I had all of that beautiful paint mixed up and had continued to spritz it with water, so I was able to make some gel prints from the leftover paint.  That saved my project!  I stamped the sentiment onto a gel print and cut it out to cover my mistake, whew!

Everyone makes mistakes when crafting and it can be very frustrating, but there is always a way to save something, even if not in the originally intended way.  I actually like how the words pop off of the canvas after I cooled down for a few days, ha ha!  All of the paint layers and mounted flowers come together to create really nice texture.  

I love giving my finished pieces a splash of black or white and this time added splashes of watered down Cloud 9.  

I was really pleased with how the flowers grow up to frame the sentiment.

You can see that I used the darker tinted flowers closer to the bottom of my canvas.  

I enjoyed this particular color mix and think it will work beautifully with any of Kay's stamps in any other color, besides purple.  I really liked making the impressionistic background and think I will explore the idea further by making some ATC backgrounds with different primary shades.  I'm looking forward to seeing what the other bloggers share during this topic and hope you are too!

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