Weekly Journal Spread

I was able to work my way through a second week of Nina's idea of doing one spread gradually throughout the week. This works well for me as I am a veeerrry slow worker and can't get a whole drawing done at once usually. This spread really took a lot of my time this week but I love how it turned out. I made one super error in it but don't think it will show much on a casual perusal. Any artist worth their salt would eventually see it after studying it but I think I'll leave it at that. If you are a person who loves puzzles you'll enjoy my little unofficial challenge.

My aim this week was to try out Andrea's medium of just plain, cheap blue ink from any standard ink pen that people use all the time in their ordinary writing. I started with the pencil and although it didn't come out as nice as her work, I still liked it well enough to continue on to the ink bottle. This led me to the idea of making a page around the idea of writing a letter so I added the paper. (Because I am not typically a single color person but one who wants to see all colors at once, I made the paper in the complementary color and then heaved a sigh of relief!) Well, you can't use ink with a pencil so I had to add a pen and I admit to cheating a bit here-- the pen fit perfectly into my scheme so I traced it rather than drew it. I know, I'm trying to learn to draw but it was just too perfect to pass up. Blue Ink came next and then I was stumped. Folk art being one of my loves, I decided to add some to the big empty corner. I got the values off some from what I wanted but its okay; I figure I gained a little more experience.

At this point I figured I was done with the major parts of the page but wasn't satisfied and then I did something I almost never do -- I started to play! I added the figures sitting on the pencil and the spider and that led to the other figures. These represent my grandkids and they will love seeing themselves on the page. Then I added my little muse Beady Guy who is telling all of you to give this technique a try whether it's using the blue ink or building a page one piece at a time. Come on and have some fun!

I apologize for the long run-on paragraph. Blogger isn't accepting my double enters for space between paragraphs so I am resorting to different colors. Hopefull that makes it easy enough for you to read.