June 1-3

For the last few days I have enjoyed reading Martha Lever's blog "Art du Jour". She is a calligrapher and watercolor artist who lives in Jacksonville, Florida.
I've gotten some great ideas from her, which she says she's gotten in turn from other folks. All of us seem to "steal" and adapt from each other. In her book "Cover To Cover", Shereen LaPlantz said "One of the great joys in art is transmutation. We all learn from others' ideas. The process of adapting these new ideas to our tastes and needs is transmutation." I especially admire Martha's fun lettering. She has taken Suzy Ratto's brush letters to a different level by adding black micro lines to them in the style of Sherri Kiesel. And who knows where Suzy and Sherri originally got their ideas?
Another thing I really love on her blog are her wonderful watercolor doodle flowers. Since I'm not much of an illustrator, I adapted that idea to make the flowers on the right page. I used HeroArts "A Real Candytuft" stamp, coloring directly on the stamp with Tombow markers, and spritzing with water before pressing it to the paper. This is a favorite technique that gives a watercolor look to stamps. The taller, darker flowers were the initial stamping, while the lighter, shorter ones were the second stamping done without reinking. After they dried, I used a micron pen to draw the black lines to define them. This is what gives a hand drawn look to a stamped image. I had to extend the stems with the pen.
On the word "June", after writing it with a Zig brush marker in one color, I added a new layer by giving a flick on top of each letter with a darker color. This is a trick I've used for years after learning it from Suzy Ratto's booklet "Color Layering System". However, the new layer just sits there. For some reason, this time I decided to see what would happen if I used my Kuratake Waterbrush filled with blending fluid to pull the top color around. It blended nicely, and that was an interesting discovery, which I'll try to remember.