Let’s Create a Mother’s Day Card!
MOM, a small word with such BIG meaning!
Recently I drew the word MOM in big capital letters, and I’m finding it amazing how many ideas are flowing for what one can do with that base idea. I’ve been designing both with watercolors and pens, and in Procreate (a drawing app for the iPad).
I’m attaching my MOM drawing (you’d be surprised how hard it is to get these block letters drawn out decently!) for you to print out and trace onto watercolor paper or upload into Procreate. It’s also a great activity for kids to fill in however they want for mom’s day.
Watercolor and Pen Card
Here’s one I painted the other day with watercolors and a pen for the turquoise shadow:
For this card, I held up my MOM letters I drew with a piece of watercolor paper over it to a window and traced the letters lightly on the watercolor paper (my paper was 4×6 inches).
Next I applied water to the first ‘M’ and dropped orange paint in at the top of the letter and created a gradient wash towards the middle with less pigment towards the middle until it was just clear water. I repeated this process for the other letters and let it dry.
Then I added water to the entire letter ‘M’ again and added magenta paint to the bottom, creating a gradient wash towards the middle with less pigment towards the middle until it gently overlapped the orange. I repeated this process for the other letters and let it dry.
I repeated this process a few times until I felt good about the overlapping, charging most color on the top and bottom.
When the watercolor portion was dry, I used orange and pink markers to smooth out the outline of the letters and then used a turquoise marker to add the shadow.
I may add some gold or glitter somewhere on this, haven’t decided! The possibilities are endless!
Procreate Card
Once I dialed in the MOM letters I also uploaded them into Procreate and created cards for my Mother’s Day Card Collection, on Zazzle. Here they are:
For these cards, I created a 7 x 5 inch canvas in procreate, uploaded my MOM drawing, traced it (on a new layer) with a solid monoline brush, and filled the letters with white.
**Since then, I’ve created a stamp brush with this MOM so that I can just stamp it on my canvas and size it however I want – so fast! If you are familiar with how to use procreate and stamp brush, feel free to download it and use it in your own way.
Next, I duplicated the solid letters and filled them with black, added a ‘gaussian blur’, reduced the opacity to like 30% and moved it down and to the right a little to create a shadow.
Then I uploaded some of my artwork in a layer above the white MOM letters and used a clipping mask to attach the art work to the letters.
For some added details, I used a glitter brush to add an outline and a darker colored pencil brush to add a little depth. Also, I added a butterfly and some flourishes as well as a background color and a frame to finish it off.
This process can be repeated with different artwork and colors for an endless variety of moms!
More…
I have another blog post about mom’s on Mother’s Day HERE
The artwork for that one is similar, but this post also has a download of the word ‘mom’ in many other languages.
Here’s hoping that whatever your circumstances are, you have a time to create some beautiful art and take good care of yourself this Mother’s Day!
-Kim