Hello, crafty friends! It's Marie here from Marie Nicole Designs.
Today, I'm going to be sharing a mini class with basic tips and tricks to get you started with Nuvo's Aqua Brush Pens.
- There are 36 colours available.
- Blendable.
- They are highly pigmented.
These pens can be simply described as liquid watercolour inside a brush pen.
- Apply straight from the pen on paper.
- Apply the pen onto your craft mat, mix with water, and apply with a brush.
- Mix them to create custom colours
- Add shimmer by mixing with the shimmer pens.
There is so much potential in the Nuvo Aqua Flow Pens! Let's get started...
Swatch It Out!
When getting familiar with your Aqua Brush Pens, I highly recommend swatching them out.
This is a fantastic way to get familiar with each color.
This allows me to see the colour at full strength as well as the gradient that is possible to achieve with each colour.
Making your own swatch chart is very simple to do!
- Just grab a piece of watercolour paper, a ruler, and a pencil.
- Use your ruler and pencil to divide your paper into squares.
- You can make your squares as large or small as you'd like. The squares on my swatch chart are about 1 inch by 1 inch.
Once your swatch chart is prepped, add a little colour to each square.
- You can organise by the number on each label
- By rainbow order
- Or in any way you desire
I chose to arrange mine by rainbow so that I could see the relationship between each colour family.
Once your colours are swatched out, you will be able to easily choose which colours will work best on your projects, as well as which colours you may want to mix together.
Remember to write the name or the number of each colour on the swatch squares, so you will know which colour to choose for your creative work!
Swatching will allow you to see each colour on paper.
You are also able to vary the colour on each swatch.
I like to apply my colour directly to the top of my swatch square, and then pull the colour down using my Nuvo Water Brush.
This allows me to see the colour at full strength as well as the gradient that is possible to achieve with each colour.
Mixing Your Colors!
Here's where you can start to get creative!
In my video, I discuss mixing a little more thoroughly, so if you want a real-time demonstration of that, I'd recommend taking a look at the video.
I like to make little "mixing cards" for my mixed colours. This is just making more swatch charts the same way I made my first one.
If you want, you can keep these, or use them as you are colouring a project.
Like I mentioned before, it is helpful to see your colours on paper before using them on your project.
If you take a look at the top line of my mixing card, you can see three colours that I first mixed. I was attempting to create orange, green, and purple.
They look a little dull, don't they? That's because I just grabbed random colours to mix without paying attention to the qualities each colour has.
What do I mean by colour qualities?
If you look at your reds now that they are swatched out, you will notice that they are not all the same.
Some have more of a pink or purple tint to them; others look more orange-ish.
This is the difference between warm and cold colours.
Typically, your cool colours are your purples, blues, and greens. Your warm colours are reds, oranges, and yellows.
When mixing, try to pay attention to the warm and cold properties of your colours.
For example, if I choose a red that has an orange hue (warm red), and try to create purple by mixing with a blue with more of a green tint, my purple is going to be kind of dull or muddy.
This is because I'm trying to mix orange and green, which we know makes brown! If, instead, I choose a cool red that has more purple, and a blue that has more purple, I will end up with a more vibrant purple.
Let's Paint an Image!
After taking the time to get familiar with your colours and experimenting with mixing, you can make more intentional choices on what colours to add to your images.
If you know what the colours look like on your paper, and which colours mix well, you don't have to worry about choosing a colour that clashes.
My card above is very warm. My flowers have a warm yellow with some yellow-brown colour for shading. My leaves are a brownish-green with brown for shading.
I was able to select warm colours because I could see each colour on my swatch chart and compare them against each other to make the best decision.
Tip
To make your watercolour easier, you can emboss your stamped images.
The embossed lines will form a ridge that will help trap in your colour! This makes it incredibly easy to stay within the lines when colouring.
Watercolour likes to move and run; that is just its nature. A loose watercoloured image is very beautiful, but if you prefer to stay in the lines, try embossing!
I hope this has given you some information to try out on your own.
The best thing to remember is just to have fun!
Select the colours that you love and create what makes your heart happy.
Until next time,
Marie Nicole
