Backporch: Technique of the Week: Stampboard Watercolor

Friday, September 30, 2016

Technique of the Week: Stampboard Watercolor

Special Thanks to Kae Pea from Rubbermoon for the inspiration for this technique!

This is actually not so much a technique as it is discovering a new (for me) medium. I recently was on Facebook, and I saw a live post from Kae Pea of Rubbermoon, where she was doing watercolor painting on clay board, or stampboard.

By the way, I just want to take a moment to say if you have not "liked" Rubbermoon's page on Facebook, be sure to do that right now! She does live instructional videos, and posts lot of inspirational art. For that matter please "like" the Art 'n Soul page, and the Magenta page also, you won't regret it!

Let me start out by saying that Kae Pea makes it look so very easy, but she has a lot of experience with painting. My big take-away from the experience is that it was just a lot of fun to paint on the stampboard. It's a very forgiving surface - no pilling, no warping. Kae Pea chose to paint on a 2"x2" stamp board piece, and I chose a 3.5" x 5" piece.

At first I did a layout on 3.5" x 5" piece of watercolor cardstock. This was just to make sure I would be happy with the general layout of the piece, and the colors. I did change some of the colors when I moved on to using the stamp board. I will post the card I made with this layout in another post.

For the stampboard project, first I stamped the Magenta leaf image (0454.J) using Ranger Archival Sepia ink. I dried the image with a Ranger Heat-It tool, just by waving the heated air lightly over the board. Stamp board can bubble if it gets too hot, so be careful with this step.

I decided to paint the leaf images with Nuance, and chose Bright Yellow, Yellow Orange, Orange, Nutmeg, and Red. For the sky I chose Royal Blue, Aquamarine and Turquoise. I tapped some of each color into a palette and added water mixed with a little Perfect Pearls powder for some shimmer.

In her video, Kae Pea had recommended to paint the image with water first to help the paint flow better. I worked in small areas at a time and layered the colors onto the leaf images. When I was happy with the leaves, I painted the three shades of blue all around the leaves as though they were falling through the sky.

My card panel on the left, and Stampboard panel on the right

At the end I added a little mica watercolor from an Artquest Palette in gold, copper and silver. I also flicked the mica watercolor over the images.

The last thing I did was to stamp a Magenta sentiment (Thinking of You 07.869.D) in the corner using Ranger Archival Jet Black ink.

One of the cool things about stampboard is that you can use a tool or craft knife and scrape paint off. You can create highlights, or just scrape away where you painted outside the lines. It's a very forgiving surface, and it took the paint very well and dried quickly. This project was a lot of fun to paint! I think this would be lovely as the front of a little book or journal. Kae Pea made her 2"x 2" pieces into little gift magnets - so cute!

I hope you will give Stampboard a try. Art 'n Soul has several sizes in stock, as well as a tool you can use for scraping.

Magenta Products Used:

(If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can click on the link in the stamp name below each image, or you can visit the Magenta online store here).