Holiday makes..... Part 1

... this is what I do when I go inside away from the sun at lunchtime to cool down and prevent myself looking like an overcooked lobster  :o)  and the reason I pack my 'perfect art kit' as blogged here...

These pages were created in a 6x6in Daler Rowney sketchbook which I had been working in at home - using some pages for clean up/ghost gelli prints, and other pages were finished journal pages... its an 'in progress' book...

NB some of these images have been posted on Instagram or Twitter so if you follow me on those, apologies if you've seen them already, I wanted to share them here too as my poor neglected blog needs some attention and prettiness on its pages... :o)


This page started out with a gelli ghost print across the top, I doodled a flower on top and blocked out the print with Snowflake Fresco Finish. The pencil sketched lines were overdrawn with an ink drawing pen and left to dry before adding colour....

Colour was added with Winsor & Newton water colour paints.. I haven't been using these paints for very long so each piece is a learning curve...  I like how 'juicy' it looks!

This double spread was another gelli clean up/ghost print that ended up being a weird mix of colours (not quite lilac, not quite aqua - it just wasn't nice! it had to go).. so I added Snowflake/Chalk gelli prints on top hoping to knock back some of the colour - Snowflake/Chalk came to the rescue!
(I liked the fold-out long page but reeeeeeaaalllly didn't like the colour)

I really liked how the sketch looked on the back ground and it stayed like this for days.... but then I decided I had to 'man-up' and paint it!
It looks great 'rough' painted with watercolour paint direct onto the background - on this page I didn't block out the background colour and I like that some of background pattern can be see - it give the flower head & leaves some texture.

I think I took this photo outside (the one above is inside under 'yellow' lights) the colours are much more 'true'... the black lines work so well to define everything without being too heavy, focuses everything - and these lines were drawn with both a biro and ink pen - hard to tell the difference isn't it!
After 'killing' two ink pens with wet paint the biro became my hero pen! draws on pretty much anything! :o)

A lesson learnt - keep working on a page until happy! (though I still have a slight urge to break out the white pen!)

x