As you can see my journal page has taken another turn. I started experimenting after my first pass at using markers to create a scene. I liked the two trees idea I had, so I made them bright and bold – but then my urge to continue started nagging at me. I brought out some oil pastels I never use – well, I’ve never used them with any skill – but I thought, hey – why not – so I added to the highlights of the pinks and oranges. I made shadows of varying shades around the outside. It was fun working with all the colors and the textures popped. I left alone for a day.
Then I thought it would be cool to add my signature dots around the tree trunks and body. I brought my Sharpie pens downstairs to work in the bead room as it was a warmer room – and I do admit, my mind was elsewhere – so I started stippling – and promptly wasted a Sharpie pens – duh, the marker will not show over oil pastels no matter how much you want them to. I wanted them to – so I kept trying. Well, needless to say, it was a bomb. Now I had all these little half dots of black in the color parts – so bam! I immediately jump to – hey, oil pastels had to show -after all, the last coat was oil pastels. My outlining was a disaster – the oil stick was too thick for the effect I wanted and the harder I tried to even it out – the more chunky it got and flaky – not the line I was looking for. So I finished it up with the black pastel – scraping some off and adding more to bring the line out. Then I brought out my ChartPak markers and finish the dot idea, but the pens are very thick, even when I put them on the side angle – so now I am stopping right here and now.
I might come back to it as the trees look so lonely – but maybe it will stay this way. It’s what I like – I can always change it or cut it up and use parts of it on homemade cards.