I Spy Art

My friend Sandra is so good with what I am calling I Spy Art. I have tried it several times and have never been successful until this piece. Sandra probably does hers differently, for me I create a watercolor background of blobs here and there and start looking for anything that stands out. Like this 'blah! blah! blah!' guy. So. much. fun!!! Let me show you what I did. 

I began with these supplies. Some Ecoline liquid watercolors from Royal Talens, a couple brushes including a black tulip brush from ZenART Supplies, and a sheet of watercolor paper - also from Ecoline. Any watercolor would work, I just really love these beautiful bright colors. 

I used the mop brush to cover the whole page with water. A mop brush holds a lot of water and lets you work fast to cover a larger area quickly. And I started dropping in some color. The Ecoline liquids have an eye dropper inside to make it really easy. And everywhere I dropped color into the water - it started to bloom and spread. 

I used just three colors on this piece of art. If some areas need more water you can spray some on or add more with a brush. Typically that mop brush in the first step does the job. Where the colors needed a little help spreading - I spritzed on some water. 

Drops of water can be added with a brush in a specific area. See how that water is puddled in a line at the bottom of the page? I like that! And I left it alone. 

Yes, I do tend to get excited and add too much water at times. You can either let it dry, or you can blot up the part you don't want with a paper towel. Or tilt the paper and let the water and color run into other areas. This creates drips and runs.

Once my paper was mostly dry I noticed this one spot that needed some color. One drop of color was all it took . . .  

. . . and a wet brush to push that color around. The edges were a little too hard for me, so I sprayed some water on to soften up those lines. 

And it worked great. After making some runs by tilting my page, that red area became my blah! blah! blah! man. You can see it in this photo on the right hand side. For this particular project I let the page dry naturally. Didn't take long.

And you begin looking for shapes. Shapes that might be something. When I looked at this area, I saw an arm with a big hand and fingers attached. From there I just needed a body of some sort. Hahahahah! So, let's start looking. 

I am adding this photo super large so you get a better look. Begin looking at the different color sections and see if you can start identifying some shapes. Animals, birds, fish, objects. Anything at all. And start outlining them with your pen. The first thing I outlined was not the blah! blah! blah! man. Look in the middle about halfway down and to the left a bit - find what might be an eye. And maybe a long, tall ear. Can you find it? 

The first thing I added was a partial rabbit. And it just took off from there. One thing led to another and I kept outlining shapes. For some I added color with my ZenART brush and watercolor straight out of the Ecoline bottles. 

Once I had all the animals/shapes I could find, I started adding tangles. The bottom right section reminded me of the Galactic Explosion class I taught, so I made that little green blob into a planet - sort of - and had the tangles exploding out of it. I even added a PacMan and gave my blah! blah! blah! guy a tangled basketball. 

I love this little guy eating up all the printemps. Hahahaha! And I snuck my chop right in there as well. 

 

Here is my finished piece. So much fun!!! I may have done another right after this. Hahahaha! I like the kind of elephant guy, too.  Hahahaha! Dr. Seuss would be proud of me! I Spy Art, I hope you give it a try because it is awesome!

Black Tulip brushes from ZenART Supplies can be purchased here. 

Ecoline Liquid Watercolors can be purchased here.