I'm taking Watercolor For Cardmakers: Pre-Class

I've been taking Watercolor For Cardmakers from Online Card Classes. I took a semester of watercolor as part of my BFA, so I had plenty of supplies in my stash. The pre-class assignments were to play around with your supplies and to make some color swatches. I picked up some new supplies to round out my stash, so it was good to play with them beforehand.

First is a palette of Tsukineko Memento inks in the three left columns. In the right column is the Tim Holtz Distress Inks. I am saddened that the Distress Inks are actually amazing as watercolors. I was believing they were an over-hyped brand name that weren't actually any good. Alas! They work really well. I still found a way to enjoy the Tsukineko ones... but I'll explain in a later post. They are rather good as stains, and they are still useable. Although I might have to invest in some Distress Markers after seeing the class techniques...

Example of Tsukineko vs Distress. I inked them on to a block first and then used it as paint.

From Left: Watercolor Pencils, actual Watercolor paints, cheap watercolor paints from a kit, and Twinkling H20s.

Here's the Twinklings up close.

Here's the Twinklings up close mixed with the cheap paints from the kit, in different proportions. Basically, add as much Twinkling as you can. I'm very glad the pale Twinkling colors pick up darker normal paint colors. I had hoped it would work that way, and it was why I bought the pale colors.

These were some paintings I had made months and months before class. They are basic washes, with salt to create spots. I never managed to make them in to cards or framed art, although I meant to.