Embroidered Collage

These three cards are for a hand-drawn or painted Fall themed swap.  I sketched out shapes with waterproof Pitt pens, deliberately working loose, while I was traveling.  Then I took watercolors to them.  I'm thrilled with how they turned out, especially the two that show the foliage instead of the single leaf.  I dabbed on bits of color to get leafy variation and then ran a brush over it again when the dabs were mostly dry, which melded the colors nicely without actually fully mixing them. 

For a bit of serendipity, I accidently touched the single tree card while it was still wet and blotted it with a paper towel to remove the finger print - and the pattern transferred!  It's a great bit of extra texture. and something that would be worth deliberately exploring in the future.

I don't work with watercolors much since it's more difficult to use the images for collage.  At least it is the way I do it, with acrylic medium both underneath and over the images. But when I play with the technique and stuff turns out well, being able to merge colors or put on transparent layers - like toning down the blue in the landscape photo - then I wonder if I should be spending more time with them....