Chromatic Harmony

I made it through my AECP level 2 final project and now get to move on to level 3 classes. For my first level 3 class I chose to do Chromatic Harmony taught by Aditi Mahajan. In Chromatic Harmony Aditi does a great job of teaching about color theory and using a color wheel when creating your projects. 

Aditi's projects really stretched my creativity using ink colors from different color families to ink blend each project. I have done ink blending on stencils and dies but Aditi takes it so many steps further than I have ever tried before and the results are fantastic.

Chromatic in art is the use of colors that have a dominant wavelength or hue, and are rich and vibrant. Harmony in art is the use of colors, shapes, and other elements to create a pleasing or balanced effect.

There are 13 cards that you can create in this class. All of the projects were terrific but the three above were my favorites. 

In lesson 2 we learned about analogous color composition. This lesson uses the Altenew Craft-A-Flower: Hellabore die and for the bonus project in the middle I chose the Altenew Craft-A-Flower: Sulfar Cosmos die. I accidently made extra flowers so instead of stashing them or trashing them I made the 3rd card to the right. We used variousink groups to blend the die cut pieces before assembling them giving them depth.

We started out by die cutting all of the flower pieces using colored cardstock. Once we had all of the pieces cut, we then started ink blending each of the pieces with various ink colors. Aditi showed how you can mix inks from different color families to give you more options and to give your project added depth. When everything was ink blended we then assembled the flowers. Altenew's keyhole system and step-by-step insturctions makes assembly of their layered flowers so easy.

We finished off by using Altenew Metallic Watercolors to splatter each project for a little extra shine.

 
In lesson 3 we continued with blending analogous colors but this time we used Altenew Build-A-Garden: Lovely Rose Peony and the Altenew Peony & Lilac Swag stamps, dies and coordinating stencils. 

For these cards we heat embossed the stamps on white cardstock. Then using the coordinating stencils we again used a variety of ink colors to ink blend each flower and the results are just stunning. Aditi showed us how to take our ink blending further than just using one color family but how to get added depth and dimension by using different ink from multiple color families. 

When the ink blending was complete we cut each of the pieces using the coordinating dies. The dies leave a white border around the images but for these we used a black marker and colored the white border which gives the colors much more pop. 

On the card on the left we used the back textured side of the Altenew Sticky Mat to stamp and create a background with gold ink. This was something I had not thought of doing but it gives a terrific look.

For the card on the right we again ink blending the image and colored the white border left by the die. We used an embossing folder to create our background for this card. For mine I used the Altenew Deck Planks embossing folder. This is a fabulous embossing folder that I can seeing getting a lot of use. Because the images is such a large image we were able to cut the image in half and create a different layout than we would by just placing the image on the card front. 

Lesson four had us watercolor with analogous colors. We again used the Lovely Rose Peony stamp for this card.

We stamped the image on a piece of cold press watercolor paper using Versamark ink and heat embossed with white embossing powder. The images were watercolored using a variety of Altenew Fresh Dye inks. The inks were smooshed onto a palette and then water was added to get a good consistency for painting in the images. A wet-on-wet technique was used to get the inks to blend.

This class would be great for a beginner and for those more experienced cardmakers who wants to learn more about color blending and mixing.