Happy Birthday Card With A Simple Watercolour Sunset Mountain Landscape For Beginners + VIDEO2/5/2021
Watercolour landscape with mountains at sunset, this is something I wanted to paint for a while. I’ve been seeing this all over Instagram and Pinterest and finally I gave it a try and I really like it. This is one of those paintings that I want to paint again and again. Even for me, still a beginner, this was a very simple project, I had no problems painting it. Well, I had few misbehaving supplies, but other than that, there were no major difficulties, compared to few of my previous projects.
I am using a long or tall card base (not sure what the correct term is), I bought them few months ago and I don’t tend to use it much, even though it’s rather a trendy thing to use in the card making community. I thought though, for this project it is quite fitting. However, do not be restricted by sizes, or even that you have to make a card. In all the examples I saw on the internet, no one was making a card (which is the case for all my cards that I paint from scratch) and I also made few cards in the standard A6 size and I’m planning to paint something bigger so I can frame it. Therefore do not be restricted by what you see others doing, you can adjust to your needs.
I started by attaching the watercolour card stock onto a hardboard using a double sided tape. These were the two supplies that were misbehaving! The painters tape, despite being rather sticky when you touch it, it kept detaching from the board. I think it was more the heat from the heat gun, rather than the water. I will keep an eye on it to find out which one it is, because I bought pack of three. The card stock, Canson XL, was also not working well. I know this is a cheap card stock, I should not be surprised if it doesn’t work well. However, previously I had the feeling that the water more like sits on top of it and takes longer to soak in, this time it was drying very quickly and I had quite a lot of streaks. I don’t mind that, but if you would like to have better results, you probably need to invest in better card stock, because when it comes to watercolouring, according to all artist, the watercolour card stock is the key.
I started with painting the sky. First I applied clean water across the whole panel and then I added the colour. I chose pink and orange. In my example for this blog I started with orange and then added streaks of pink and when I was editing my video I realized that I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to have a pink sky with streaks of orange. Oh well, I can always make another card. After I applied the colours, I thought they were too saturated, so I took clean flat brush and soaked up little bit of the colour, which also blended the two colours and made it much smoother.
I let it dry and then I painted the mountains. The idea is to go from back to front, starting with the lightest colour for the mountain that is furtherest away. I painted the mountains using one blue paint. I started with very light blue that I diluted with water. And when painting in the mountains in front I made the blue more saturated. After I painted each set of hills, I let the piece dry. I also had a sketch with the placement of the mountains that I made on my iPad. You can also use a reference photo or just paint without any reference.
I painted altogether five layers of the mountains, or hills. When I painted it for the first time, I managed to paint it in a way that the mountains weren’t flat, the middle hill had lines on the sides, which gave it little bit of definition. This happened by accident, I have no idea how I created it, but I tried to add few lines to the middle hill and I think it worked. Although I still have to work on it. Most of the time when I see people painting this, they use one flat colour, which is also nice. But thanks to my inexpensive watercolour paper, it often leafs streaks and at least in my opinion, it made the hills look less flat and more organic. What do you think?
Also the top of the last hill I covered in small zig zag lines, to make it look like it’s covered by trees. I think it looks good, but it’s optional, actually there are many things I painted here that are optional.
What I really like about this type of painting, is that you can make so many variations. You can change the colours of the sky or the mountains. You can paint the mountains in different shapes and you can paint the trees all over the bottom or paint just one big tree. So many options! Since I’m making a tall card, the top of the painting seemed little bit empty and I remembered someone painting birds and I thought that it would be a great idea to add few birds to the top left side. And on the other side, I stamped a small “Happy Birthday” sentiment.
Lastly I adhered the panel onto top of my card base. The tall card bases I bought already pre-cut and pre-scored, but you can make them yourself if you want.
I also painted few A6 panels, which looks very nice. I painted a replica of the tall card and I also painted a horizontal card, where I painted the sky using purple and I painted only one row of the mountains using a black paint. This is actually one of the simplest version of this landscape. VIDEO TUTORIAL
PRODUCTS USED
Disclaimer: I’m currently not using any affiliate links. These links are just to help you find the products. The list includes alternatives to what I was using and while I haven't used some of them, I only recommend brands I trust.
Canson XL, Watercolour Cardstock , 300gsm/140lb
AmazonDE | AmazonUK Kuretake, Gansai Tambi, Watercolour Paints 36 Set AmazonDE | AmazonUK Daler Rowney Watercolour Brushes 4, 6, 10 AmazonDE | AmazonUK Daler Rowney Small Watercolour Brushes 1, 3, 10/0, 3/0 AmazonDE | AmazonUK Royal & Langnickel, Mixing Palette AmazonDE | AmazonUK Clearly Besotted, Message Me - Sentiment Stamp Set You can find various sentiment stamp sets here: ClearlyBesottedUK CreateASmileDE SevenHillsCraftsUK Tsukineko, Versafine Ink pad, Onyx Black AmazonDE | AmazonUK Papermania, Tall/Slim Card Base + Envelopes AmazonDE | AmazonUK Sellotape Double Sided Tape AmazonDE | AmazonUK Fiscars, Guillotine A5 AmazonDE | AmazonUK Papermania, Stamp Block AmazonDE | AmazonUK Crafting Mat, Black AmazonDE | AmazonUK YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKEPIN ME
Did you like the card? I would love, if you pinned it to your board on Pinterest!
1 Comment
14/6/2021 08:19:32
Sandi Maciver Blog offers card making videos via her website and YouTube channel.
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