Ask the experts - greeting cards
Using just three paints and three brushes, art teacher Terry O'Toole shows how easy it is to turn a black page into a stylish greeting card.
Painting your own greeting cards is an excellent and enjoyable introduction to a popular and fascinating hobby.
As greeting cards are small in scale, they are truly less intimidating than working on a large sheet of watercolour paper.
First let's consider the paints. I use a limited palette of only three colours when I am working on what I call my multi-coloured paintings.
These primaries are cadmium red, cadmium yellow (pale) and French ultramarine.
When I am working on a monochrome painting I either use paynes grey or sepia.
I much prefer tubes of paints over those little blocks of hard colour they call pans.
I found that the pans, not only got discoloured easily, but were difficult to lift plenty of paint from.
I need to put my brush into a moist squirt of paint and use it instantly.
As for the palette, I use an A4 size sheet of watercolour paper inside an A4 plastic presentation sleeve.
They give me plenty of room to move my paint around and they are light in weight, most suitable for outdoor painting. A good paper to use is the 140lb Bockingford watercolour paper, which is thick enough not to cockle when wet.
You can buy it in packs of 100 sheets of quarter imperial size.
For the greetings cards I cut the paper down into various sizes using a craft knife, a ruler, and a self sealing cutting mat.
And for brushes, three seems to be the magic number, as like my limited palette, I only use three brushes.
They are a Hake brush (medium size) a Connoisseur brush (size 16) and a Rigger brush (size 3).
The Hake is a traditional Japanese watercolour brush with a long wooden handle, into which goat hair is stitched.
The Connoisseur brush has a round handle, with a mixture of man made and natural fibre.
The smallest brush I use is the Rigger brush, which is a long-haired brush, made of synthetic fibres.
Other useful materials are an A4 ring binder, one inch masking tape, a small piece of sandpaper, a water jar, a putty rubber, 2B pencil and a pencil sharpener.
Got all of those? Now you are ready to start.
Click on the green video icon above right to view the video.
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Email: josie.hill@lep.co.uk or call 01772 838104
Or write to: Josie Hill, Lancashire Evening Post Ltd, Oliver's Place, Fulwood, Preston, PR2 9ZA
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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