Inspire Me... No-Line Coloring with Watercolors

 

Hi all... I'm Ally and I'm your Inspire Me Monday host this week!

Today I'm going to share with you a step by step tutorial on how to color a no-line image in using watercolors.

No-line coloring basically means that once you add color to your image, all the originally stamped lines will virtually disappear and will not longer show on your finished piece of art.

Join me with a beverage of choice in hand and let's get started...

To begin, here are the supplies needed for this coloring technique:

1. Your favorite stamp set, from Power Poppy of course!
2. Watercolor paper
3. Watercolor paints (you can also use water-based markers or inks)
4. Fine tipped paint brush
5. A light colored water-based ink like Ranger's Distress Inks
6. Paper towel
7. Water
8. Patience!  LOL!

Step One:
Begin by stamping your image using a light colored ink onto the smooth side of your watercolor paper.  For my creations today, I used the gorgeous "Geraniums Take Two" stamp set, some Ranger "Old Paper" Distress ink and Strathmore 400 Series Best watercolor paper.

Step Two:
Take your fine-tipped paint brush and some clean water and begin applying it in a small area on your image.  The idea is to just wet one part of the image at a time. The leaves of the Geranium plant are fairly large so I began in this spot on my image.

Step Three:
Carefully take the water out to the edges of each individual part of your single piece of image and then add a small amount of the watercolor pigment to the wet part of the image.  DO NOT wet down two pieces of an image that are side by side.  You could cause your water and ink to bleed from one part to the next and that's something you don't want.  I'm using Yarka Moist Watercolors for my image today.

If you notice on the photos below, the left side shows the green watercolor pigment has been added to the wet leaf.  Use your paintbrush to either add more pigment or pull the pigment around in the wet spot until it reaches all the edges of your wet images.

To change colors, rinse your brush thoroughly and dab it on your paper towel.  When the water is clear again coming from your brush, you are good to go and can change to a different color now.  You will do this quite frequently throughout this process so make sure you have a few pieces of paper towel on hand just in case.

I also began to add water and then pigment to the blooms of the image.  The left side shows the individual flowers petal wet and the right shows the pink pigment added to the wet areas.

Step Four:
Continue wetting down areas and adding pigment until you can't do it any longer.  Here I have 3 leaves and a whole bunch of flower petals already done.  Notice that not one wet area touches another here?!?

You can also add more than one color of pigment to a wet area.  It's not very noticeable but I did add both a dark green and a mustard yellow pigment to the leaves of the Geranium.

Step Five:
Allow your image to dry!  This is where the PATIENCE part of creating comes in.  NOW... if you really want to speed up your drying time then you can use a heat tool BUT I would recommend using it from the under side of the image so you don't spread those pools of pigment and water!  The heat from the bottom will eventually dry your paint above.

Step Six:
Now that your image is dry, you can begin wetting and adding other color to other parts of your image.  Keep in mind that you STILL don't want to wet any areas that are side by side so you don't spread that pigment too thin or leak into something you don't want to color yet.

TIP:  Keep a stamped image of your design beside you as a reference.  As you begin to color more and more, you may lose some detail.  By having the image beside you as you work, you know what each piece of the image should be and what it should look like as you paint.

Slowly, but surely, each element of your image will get some color on it!  Here I have begun adding color to my stems and some more of the flower petals.

Step Seven:
Once your base color has been laid down in all of the elements of your image, you can now add some detail back into your design.

Here I took a fairly dry brush with concentrated pigments and added in the fine greenery details like the fine green stems that are attached to the hanging buds and I also added some veining to the leaves.  A light wash of a subtle yellow paint was added to the back ground as well!

You can see HERE on my blog, the final card I created using this beautiful image.  I hope you like it as much as I do! 

Thank you for joining me today!  I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial.  Feel free to PIN it for future reference so you can come back and try this technique yourself!

Happy coloring everyone!

~ Allison Cope ~