Hiroshige inspired card

I recently went to see an exhibition at the British Museum of work by the Japanese artist Hiroshige, and this card draws inspiration from the style and colours of Japanese wood block prints.

The branch and the lanterns are both stamps from a set I’ve had for years and the first thing I did was stamp them onto the card so I could build the rest of the design around them.

After that I focused on creating the light ring effects from the lanterns by blending yellow and orange ink first straight onto the card and then around a circular mask to strengthen the ‘ring’ effect. I then filled in the rest of the white space with different blue inks such that it got ‘darker’ the further away from the light source of the lanterns.

I used Pitt Artist Pens to give some shading to the edges of the lanterns and make them look 3D without covering the yellow glow too much.

The yellow highlights on the branch, around the lanterns, and the ‘fireflies’, as well as the pink cherry blossoms, were all done with POSCA paint pens. The dark shadows on the back of the branch were added with a black fineliner.

Materials:

Stamps

•‘Lantern’ set by Antonis Tzanidakis / Stamperia

Inks

•Distress Inks in ‘peacock feathers’, ‘wild honey’, ‘weathered wood’, and ‘spiced marmalade’

•Lavinia Stamps Elements in ‘Della Blue’

•Versafine Clair in ‘Portobello’

Pens

•Faber-Castell Pitt artist brush pens in ‘medium skin 116’, ‘warm grey III 272’, & ‘cold grey I 230’

•Black fineliner in size 0.1

•Posca paint pens in ‘sunshine yellow’ & ‘light pink’

Other

•Lavinia Stamps circle mask inner (smallest size)