I had a go at another of Ali’s demos the other day.  I added a few tweaks of my own, like a bit of oil pastel at the end, and some dots and scribbles of a gelly roll glitter pen on the highlights.  It was fun to do but I need more practice at getting a looser style, and blending out.

Practising with some texture in this painting using sand mixed into acrylic paint.  This was painted using the techniques from  Alison Board’s first book ‘A beginners guide to watercolour with mixed media’.  I love this book as it it gives you lots of ideas and easy to understand instructions and I like Alison’s lively, loose painting style.  I used dried fern, fennel,  and acer leaves dropped into the wet background and left to dry.  There is also some lifting out, using a leafy stencil and a magic sponge eraser, and some messy splattering and dripping.  The camera hasn’t quite picked up on some of the subtle shading so it looks much better in real life.

I am a big fab of Alison Board, so whenever I get the chance I watch her demos on Artist Demo Days on facebook, or on her own web page, then sometimes I have a  go myself.  However this one is from one of her workshops on the SAA site.  I used watercolour, gouache, brusho,  conte crayons and a fine liner pen.  Alison used a photo of Boo, a little owl, which has such a lovely face, and I love the splashy loose techniques she uses.