Watercolor Apples Tutorial

Hello friends! I hope you are well and healthy. We had one day of rainy weather this weekend and one day of sunshine. I walk in any weather (except if it is really icy), but Saturday's walk was a wet one, even so I never regret going for a walk. 

Today, I have an art journal page to share with Distress Ink watercoloring. You can use the techniques for other themes and projects too.

At the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Food and Drink theme this week. Don't miss our November guest designer's beautiful project, at Laura Cassina aka elaborando on instagram. And don't miss the very creative approaches to this theme by the design team.

I love apples and grew up with apple trees in the garden. There are almost always apples in the house and my youngest loves them too. He prefers red apples, while I like almost any apple. I did an art journal page featuring some of my favorite apples and watercolored them. The names were printed and cut into strips. The page was stapled to a burlap page in my Dina Wakley Media Journal.

I used Tim Holtz Schoolhouse Blueprint set and stamped the apple six times on watercolor paper.

Each apple is painted with a different combination of green and red Distress Inks. Smear the ink pads on a non-stick craft sheet, mist once with water and then pick up with a paint brush. By using more or less water you can get a lot of shades from just one ink pad.

Continue with the rest of the mainly green apples. 

I looked at reference photos, but didn't aim at perfection. Leave white highlights on the apples to give them life. Paint shadows with Black Soot.

When the Distress Ink was dry, I splattered some Scribble Sticks on the apples, to add texture. Dip a Scribble Stick in water and then flick a paint brush against it. This is one of my favorite ways of adding splatters and it is also fairly mess-free. I used sticks from both Scribble Sticks 1 and Scribble Sticks 2.

Finally, when the apples were dry, I added a little bit of Gilded Avocado Opal Blaze Polish. Apply it with your finger.

Lobo is my all-time favorite apple. We had a tree in the garden of my childhood home and I am forever looking for the same kind of apples that came from that tree. It is not an easy apple sort to find. One day, I hope I can have my own tree. It is a late autumn apple.

The Scribble Sticks gives a great texture and since they are more opaque than the Distress Ink, even the lighter colors show. 

Granny Smith is best for baking, but sometimes I feel like eating them as is too. I like the bright green color of this apple. 

Golden Delicious is another apple that I eat sometimes. I like varying the apples we have at home. 

Ingrid Marie is another autumn garden apple, which I always get when it is available in the shop. It's got a deep red color, in fact, a little darker than my apple here.

The title was die cut from kraft paper with the SSS Archie Jr. Solid die. 

Royal Gala is one of those apples that are almost always available in the shop and I like how crisp it is. It is also one of the apples that were most widely available in South Africa. 

Here you can see the texture of the splatters and the polish.

Gravenstein is another garden apple, which we used to have in the garden. As you can see, I added some red to this apple, which was initially green/yellow. The red was added with a Scribble Stick.

The polish shimmers real nice from certain angles of light. 

I hope you will join us this week in our Food and Drink challenge. You have a chance to win a $25 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for stopping by here today! 

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

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