Sue Smith Creative Designs Watercolor

Watercolor “Bokeh” easily!

July 5, 2020

Hi,  Joyce Schmidt here! I am so happy to spend this year designing with Elizabeth Craft Designs!

When I think of photography the first technique that come to my mind is the “bokeh” technique. This phenomenon occurs when too much light enters the lens and the picture is blurry, but the beautiful circles of light that are left are beautiful! I wanted to replicate that using watercolor.

Here’s how I created the Bokeh backgrounds:

1. Cut six pieces of Elizabeth Craft Designs watercolor paper into two 4×5″ pieces.

2. I used a washi tape (or painter’s tape) to tape a border around my yardstick and to hold it down as a frame for the background. (tip: this makes your piece look cleaner but it is not essential.)

This is how I prep my card stock to paint this technique

3. Saturate the paper with clean water and a soft brush. You want the paper to be really wet layer color on a little at a time so that the colors and blend with the water.

Layer color on a little at a time so that the colors and blend with water.

4. I used my Elizabeth Craft Designs watercolor set to drop on color allowing it to spread onto the paper naturally. All you do at this point is watch is spread and add color or water as you want.

5. After it is completely dry, then use stencil to create dots. I created a stencil with different sizes of circles so that I could replicate the bokeh look. It needs to have many different sizes no bigger that 1.5″ in diameter.

6. Use a good quality white pigment ink and sponge dauber the ink into the circles, overlapping them and variegating the intensity of the ink you add to each circle.

7. After completing your bokeh dots, dry completely with heat tool. this will allow you to not smear your dots!

8. To complete the card I stamped it with the “You got this” stamp from Sue Smith’s collection of Stamp from Elizabeth Craft Designs. 

Image with stamped image on it.

For more information on how to do this technique, make sure to watch my video tutorial HERE.

I hope you feel inspired to try this fun technique yourself. Choose some pretty colors and create your own Bokeh background – The possibilities are endless! 

Joyce

You Might Also Like

%d bloggers like this: