Inking … Glade of the Amanita

I knew I wanted to play with my gel press, inks and Dinkles so I gathered together everything I thought I needed. Then the messy bit started.

I brayered ink onto the gel press and then splattered it (and me) with a dark coloured, mixed up Dinkle powder. Watercolour card was carefully placed on top, given a good rub over and then lifted off.

The background didn’t give as strong a colour as I want, so after stamping the toadstools in place, I set about with the inks again and applied them with a stencil brush to give a more vibrant colour contrast.
Edging the whole piece with a graphite colour took quite a while and several rounds of application, dry and apply again before I was happy with the result.

I recently treated myself to a set of KOH-I-NOOR Artist’s Soft Pastel Pencils and this is what I used to colour the toadstools and build the colours I wanted.
The pastels are lovely to work with as you can apply a series of colours and then blend. So the toadstools started with yellow, then progressed through orange, red and finally burgundy on the caps and then were blended. A similar process was used on the stems.

Sorry but magical toadstool are not complete with magical orbs and lots of glitter. It’s law, or an old charter or something! (To slightly misquote the fabulous Mr Robert Rankin)