Water pebbles - discovering a new technique

Not entirely sure what to call this technique, which I fell upon by accident as I was searching for an idea for our Christmas card. I have a set of water-colour pens that I bought after the recent calligraphy class, thinking I would use them for lettering, but instead stumbled upon the idea of drawing small coloured circles, like large dots and dropping individual droplets of water on top. Somehow, and I don't have enough know-how of physics to explain, but something to do with the paper, the water droplets stayed where they were and took several hours to soak into the paper. In the meantime they took up the colour underneath and produced this amazing effect, that looks likes pebbles of glass.

This one was the first attempt and the happy accident that led to lots of exploring and beautiful colours. 

These two are close ups of the wet design that became our Christmas card. 

It's quite unpredictable as it's difficult o control where the droplets of water go, and sometimes they merge into each other, bringing two colours together.

This is the image dried. I left it overnight to ensure all the water droplets were dry, so it was exciting to check in the morning and see how it had ended up.

And this is the final image for our card, with a bit of left-handed calligraphy underneath.

I must say I prefer the image wet rather than when it has dried. But of course it doesn't stay like that! It has produced some amazing photos though. More to come!

#mindfulnessandcreativity #waterpebbles #playing

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