The making of week one postcard challenge:austria

Ok so making of the postcard.

First port of call was to google to look up Austria artists and see if I could get inspired and it took me down a very different journey to Gustav Klimt and settled almost immediately on rendering my own version of the Tree of Life frieze.

I decided not to be completely true to the picture as clearly I am not Klimt and went for slightly different colour schemes and echo the idea rather than any true rendering.

What follows are some pics of the card in progress...

So how... Well after a few practise sketches sketched out the tree onto the watercolour card. I also added the floor part of the picture in the bright orange, pink and yellow. I then blended the background (which i should have done before I did the sketching ... Doh!) and then used the bright orange watercolour to start the tree.

Once the tree was dry I then added a gold pen outlines and some little extra gold pen details. Then I added more gold and bronze acrylic paint.

On separate paper I blended the colours for the robes and cut the shapes out, then set to on decorating them with the basic shape patterns Klimt had used.

I then added more colours, the bird on the tree and more shapes and accents.

Again on separate paper I sorted the human parts out very roughly by cutting out the shapes and using aqua markers for the shading and the gold pen.

Then it was time to layer them up and check that they worked together and add some finishing touches.

I so so so so loved doing this. And need to say a mahooosive thank you to Darcy for coming up with the challenge so please if you have enjoyed reading about this press on the button on the top right and go and visit her blog and everyone else's postcards!

Happy crafting all!

Such fun!

C xxx