Butterfly Effect - Be the Change

Today I'm excited to be an artist for the Butterfly Effect! In a nutshell, the Butterfly Effect is a movement to share art and kindness, "a movement that drops artwork in public locations around the world to spark charitable giving". A wooden butterfly is decorated and then hidden, and by the generosity of the Wahl family, whoever finds it will have $250 donated to the charity of their choice.

My butterfly will be hidden somewhere in Bakersfield today, and clues will be posted on the Butterfly Effect Facebook page... if you're close by, take a peek - maybe you'll find it! Or maybe you'd like to get involved!

Here are a few pictures of my butterfly in process - I started off by prepping the surface with QoR Cold Press Ground, then sketched out my scene.

I used liquid watercolors to paint the scene - the watercolor ground makes it possible to watercolor any surface, but there was a little bit of a learning curve to the process. Still though - it was fun to learn something new, and to paint this fun scene.... just a little more 'bleedy' than I'm used to.

As I usually do with watercolor, I stared with some underpainting, and played a bit with some negative painting on the leaves in the lower section.

I used a mixture of Hydrus and Peerless liquid watercolors as I worked - these are both fun products to work with, and I'll be comparing them sometime in the coming months for you.

Just a few more close ups - it was fun incorporating a few stamps into the painting.

The oval stamp is a sneak peek of an upcoming release from Impression Obsession (not one of mine, but it was handy!), and the alphabet stamps are from a set I got at Michael's.

I'm excited about today - this was a fun project! Thanks for letting me share!