Hello Creative Adventurers,

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this is an UPDATE for my Session "Create a Festive Letter Paper in 2 Weeks"

If you need inspiration for a holiday letter paper, I created two designs for you :)

Design 1 - Holly

Here you can really make use of the opacity of gouache. I mixed green with yellow to achieve a lighter green to paint over the first layer of the holly leaves. If you don't water gouache down, it will be opaque enough to cover other colours.

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 1 - student project

Close up

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 2 - student project

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Design 2 - Trees in Winter

Here I used a bit of green and mixed it with an ultramarine blue to achieve a cooler green for this night scene. Later I used white again, starting from the tip and then using downward brush strokes to add snow. The background was created with a watered down version of the cooler green I used for the trees.

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 3 - student project

Close up

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 4 - student project

The following project is part of my original class project

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Here is my example project for our class. The first person to post a complete class project (including the 5 steps) will receive the letter paper I created in this video per post :) so keep up the good work and I look forward to all your creative ideas.

Step 1: Share your thoughts and research of what flowers/object you want to use as inspiration with your classmates.

I decided for the flowers because they are easy to do and the first letter I did was for my mother and sister in law who both like flowers. However, I didn't want to have a specific sketch or reference but just use my water blobs to sketch out some petals and work from this foundation to a more detailed picture.

Step 2: Upload a picture of your basic composition.

My flower concept was used for this very basic composition with two flowers in the top left corner (one flower covering parts of the other to create some depth) and one flower in the opposite lower right corner.

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 5 - student project

Step 3: Upload a snippet of your play with water-colour techniques - have fun!

I love working with gouache colours. Their vibrancy and obacity is brilliant and I love playing with those colours. Here are two pictures of this fun process.

The first is more like a study of techniques to see how colours interact and what shades I can create depending on the amount of water used.

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 6 - student project

The second picture is really just having a lot of fun with my gouache paint and creating different objects to get a good feeling for my paint and technique.

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 7 - student project

Step 4: Upload at least one work-in-progress picture of your gouache/water-colour flowers/object of your choice. It's nice to look back on how your piece develops over time.

Here are some pictures of my work over time:

First I figured where I want the centre of my flowers to be and then layed down the water base for my first layer or colours.
After that I let the first two flowers dry and went on to the sunflower at the bottom to repeat the same process (without creating a white centre).
Then I started to add more details with a darker orange and started to paint leaves.
Next I gave the top flowers a second and more vibrant layer of colours to create some depth.
I added some leaves and used water to spread the dark blue from the corners to the centre.
Last in the painting process I added pencil details to the flowers
The other steps were painting a simple line frame, cutting the first paper layer and glueing it to the brown sketchbook paper. Then I cut out the letter paper and voila, I had a beautiful personal letter paper.

Final Step: Upload your finished work

DIY Letter Paper with Gouache Flowers - image 14 - student project

Hope you like this project and I look forward to seeing your beautiful pieces :)

Romica Jones

draws - Illustration / Meditation

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