Little Pear Tree: LETRASET POST - AQUAMARKERS TAKE ONE.....

(Apologies for the piccies they are all from my phone)

It time again for my post for Letraset!

Without further ado the winner of the set of Promarkers is:

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Congratulations :) xx
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For today's post I decided to get out my Aquamarkers for a play.

You may or may not know that Letraset have had a brand of water based markers on the market for a good few years now (Unlike Promarkers, these can be blended using water!)

They are called Aquamarkers, now being an alcohol marker girl (i love me my Promarkers) I have never really played with Aquamarkers. So much so, that I in fact, only own 5 of them - 3 blues and 2 greens!! I initially got them for backgrounds.

Now just like your Alcohol markers, paper/card is a big factor in the blend you will get and needless to say it took a bit of trial and error to get a paper i liked with them. I settled on Daler Rowney Multi Media 250 gsm card, it works a dream with the Aquamarkers.

So here is my first proper attempt with the Aquamarkers, in fact using just 3 pens.

As per the above picture i stamped out my image using an Archival (water proof) ink.

I then squiggled (yes technical i know lol) a bit of green at the base of the leaf, where there would be more shadow.

I then took a normal brush and some water and saturated the area where i had laid down the Aquamarker, slowly blending it outwards, creating a lighter tone to the outer edge.

I then dotted some colour in the shaded areas to make it a little darker.

And again used water and a brush to move the ink about.

You don't even have to put the colour straight onto your drawing, you could scribble a bit on your craft mat and pick it up from here. The wetter your brush, the lighter it will go on.

I coloured in all of the leaves. Let me just add, that if you decided you wanted the leaves lighter, even if your ink has dried, you can re-wet it and then blot it off to make it lighter!! So any mistakes or bits out of the lines, can be gone, as easy as wet and blot! ;p

Then i added some colour to the flower petals.

I again saturated these and moved the ink around and then added another layer over the top. You can dry in between layers to get more of a contrast.

The leaves on the left (vine style ones) were done with two different greens and in hindsight i should have done the big leaves in the two tones as it looks really effective.

I then randomly squiggled in odd places over the background and then wet the ink to create a pale blue wash.

After it was all dry, i added a bit more colour to create some shadow and depth around the image.

So what do you think? My first attempt, using just 3 colours well 2 really (other than the odd bit of a 2nd green on the smaller leaves).

My biggest problem with them, was ME! I'm so used to wanting to blend everything out smoothly, that i kept over trying with these, when really the effect should look a bit scruffy and random, more like water colouring!

The card I use for my colouring projects can be found HERE: Marker Card

I can't wait to get some more now and have a proper play at colouring a character in :)

Don't forget to check out the blog for more amazing DT posts and the Letraset store for some amazing products.

Thanks for popping in :)

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