Baby It's REALLY Cold Outside!!

"Beautiful Blizzard"

At this very moment I am working in my studio. A perfect way to spend the day when being outside is not even a remote possibility. All schools have been closed. The high temp for the day is well below 0 degrees! Baby it's REALLY cold outside!! No use complaining (even though I do!) Instead let's work on a wintery art piece with the help of RubbrerMoon Art Stamps and some homemade stencils.

The Under Painting

Below is a photo of the initial stages of an acrylic painting. You start with a canvas the size of your choice. Here I used an 8x10 inch canvas. You will need acrylic paints-French Blue Gray, white and cream. The paints with a more liquid consistency work best. Here I have used a handmade stencil shaped like a white pine tree. I also used a stencil with a filigree type design. These will be part of the under painting. The colors used for the under painting were a variety of medium toned colors with a small amount of warm colors like Burnt Sienna and Yellow chre. The trees were created with very dark tones like Burnt Umber. The filigrees were done with French Blue Gray. The best brushes to use are stiff bristled, scratchy type brushes. They work best for achieving the wispy brush strokes seen here.

Handmade Stenciling

Next is a photo of stylized circular shapes created by cutting out a stencil from a manila folder.

Think "airy energy." Situate the circles all around for a light airy feel- blizzardy.

There are also stamps available for this airy effect. Organic Circle stamps can be purchased from Sweet Mare Studio just call 218-590-8484 or from RubberMoon Stamps by clicking on this link.

This is the type of brush that works best. Stiff,bristled and flat.

Stamping

Now it's time for stamping! Below is a photo of a stamp from RubberMoon. 

It is called Inksplat. It is sold on the RubberMoon website. Simply click the Inksplat link.

 The color used here is French Blue Gray. Stamp your entire canvas to suggest wintery/snowy shadows.

Painting

Time to start painting your pines. The brush that works best is a pointed, round brush. Here I am painting suggestions of tree shapes in white. These stand out against the medium toned background colors and also tie in nicely with the stenciled circles.

Continue painting..........

Use your French Blue Gray to add trees that tie in the blue "snowy shapes."

More Stamping.......

This time with white paint.

 all around your canvas.

And Voila!!

A wintery, snowy, blizzardy painting!

Many thanks for visiting RubberMoon's blog page. It was so much fun creating this tutorial for you to try. I hope you have enjoyed it. If you should have any questions, just leave them in the comment box.

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 Visit  this wonderful company, RubberMoon Art Stamps http://www.rubbermoon.com/

You will find oodles and oodles of amazing artsy stamps in addition to the darling chicken stamp used here.

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Find more of my art on my blog: http://teresacoxkolar.blogspot.com/

Also, check out my Etsy shop: http://www.teresaketsyshop.etsy.com

I am on Facebook too: Teresa Kolar and/or Sweet Mare Studio

All the very best!-Teresa :-D

Experiment and enjoy!

Henny Penny Christmas with Teresa Kolar

Let Your Colors Do The Talking!!

Bawk Bawk!!

Henny Penny Christmas/Holiday Greeting Card

Hello Awesome Artsy Friends! 

Teresa Cox Kolar here with RubberMoon Art Stamps!

I am so excited to show you this fun way to create a Christmas/Holiday composition on a blank greeting card.

"Let Color Do The Talking" is my title because as you can see the materials I have chosen have been arranged to suggest a particular Christmas icon-

the Christmas Tree! 

This tutorial will demonstrate how "thinking outside the box" 

can be so much fun with whimsical results. 

I often tell my students, "all we need are the colors that send the message-in this case- Christmas. 

Red and green say Christmas as clear as a bell! 

So the materials for our composition are unlimited 

because the colors have defined everything else for us. 

With that being said, 

in this tutorial, 

shape is important as well....

 All we do is stack some chickens on top of each other, 

color them red and and green and

 Voila! 

A whimsical Christmas/ Holiday greeting card. 

Love it!

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Materials

This project was a bit nostalgic. I used materials that

 reminded me of my childhood. Many of these things you 

probably have around the house, especially if you

have children. 

I created the Henny Pennys in this

tutorial using the RubberMoon Art Stamp shown above:

Chicken-#GE2535

Step 1- Stamping

Start your greeting card by stamping a row of 3 Henny Pennys. 

Draw  lines with a straight edge for a guide. You can

erase them later.

Step 2-Coloring

Continue as shown here. Color in your Henny Pennys 

with a green Sharpie marker.

Step 3-Add detail

Add to the Christmas Tree shape design using red dots to contrast the chickens.

I have added very small green dots also.

Step 4- Adhere to card stock

Here I am showing you the backside of the paper with the chickens on it..

As you can see the sharpie ink bleeds through-alot! You could use

a different type of marker that doesn't bleed so much.

I chose Sharpie because the colors are much 

brighter. When you work on the paper then, glue it to your card, you

avoid ink bleeding through to the inside.

The choice of glue is very important here. 

Use a glue stick or some type of adhesive that will not ripple the paper.

Do not grab your Elmer's glue or any other liquid type of glue.

It will ripple your paper.

(Sorry that sounded a bit bossy. 

But, really, you don't want to ripple all your hard work. Believe me, I've done it)

:-)

Step 5-Add Glitter

Photo#1

Outline the edge of your art work with red glue.

 I used glitter glue. It was what I had handy.

Instead I would recommend using Elmer's Glue 

(for this part liquidy glue is a good thing).

Glitter glue is quite difficult to keep tidy. It is difficult to get a nice straight line.

I would recommend doing a line of Elmer's then sprinkle

the glitter on that. The good old fashioned way.

Photo #2

Dry your lines with the blow dryer. Be very careful. 

Glitter glue takes a very long time to dry.

Step 6- Correction (if needed)

This step is a lesson on how to correct a spot in the art that turned out unsightly.

Look at the first and second photos  in step 5. The bottom row has two chickens that need

a re-do on their faces. If this happens to you, simply stamp on another piece of paper, color in the area you need for the correction, cut it out and glue over the unsightly spot(s).

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Add a gold star at the top with a dab of red glitter and

Voila!

Fini!

Many thanks for visiting RubberMoon's blog page. It was so much fun creating this tutorial for you to try. I hope you have enjoyed it. If you should have any questions, just leave them in the comment box.

************

 Visit  this wonderful company, RubberMoon Art Stamp Company http://www.rubbermoon.com/

You will find oodles and oodles of amazing artsy stamps in addition to the darling chicken stamp used here.

***************

Find more of my art on my blog: http://teresacoxkolar.blogspot.com/

Also, check out my Etsy shop: http://www.teresaketsyshop.etsy.com

I am on Facebook too: Teresa Kolar and/or Purple Sun Studio

All the very best!-Teresa :-D

Experiment and enjoy!