With a round object of your choice (I used a 6" plate) and a soft pencil (HB) draw a circle on your 9x12 sheet of watercolor paper.
Using a texture or geometric stamp, and waterproof ink, add some texture around the circular area.
Using a thin layer of grey paint the background.
The thin layer of paint will allow the background texture to show through; allow paint to dry completely.
Now apply alcohol inks and in random manner. I spritzed the moon area with butterscotch, lettuce, and red pepper.
Not to worry the inks will dry way lighter than what you see in the image here!
About half dry now, it will become lighter still!
Once the alcohol inks are dried take a baby wipe and in a swirling motion remove most of the ink from the moon shape on the paper.
This gives you a realistic moon shape and fall harvest coloring. Not all of the ink will wipe away and this is fine you don't want it all to wipe away.
If you need to amp up the color for the background now is the time to do so. Here I recharged the alcohol ink using some additional inks and a water bottle. Spritzing with water will cause speckling, etc., to occur giving you more texture.
Place stencil of choice onto background, and using dry stencil brush techniques push the paint through the stencil onto the paper. Here I'm using my stencil Black Birds in Tree which is available through StencilGirl Products!
Too much paint will cause the paint to go under the stencil and well creates a HUGE mess, but this piece can and will be redeemed! Folk Art Paint - Licorice
And because sometimes I am a bit of a perfectionist, yes me, I went and created a second piece the steps of which are above, just to see if I could get the stencil portion correct!
And I managed to keep the paint in the lines this time! Ok, the paint should be dry now I'm off to add more layers to the first version of this piece to see where it takes me, oh and to cook dinner!
Stay tuned for Part Two!