A birthday Card

I am terrible at making cards, really,really terrible.. not the actually making so much as the remembering to make and then remembering to send. It is a rare thing indeed to get a homemade card from me lol However, My brother is a huge Batman fan, so I just had to make a card for him.

I previous years I have done silhouettes of the batman character, but this time i wanted to try a different character and more of a realistic sketch. 

I started out with sketching the general shapes. 

and then blocked in the darkest areas..

Working on one area at a time...

I wasn't sure at all that I ha captured the features well, I wasn't well and was sketching this in bed. It looked more like Einstein than the Joker lol

I knew I wanted to work in graphite, but I also wanted a splash of colour. Using Crayola Slick Stix I added the bright red scar across the mouth. 

Here it is taken in better light, it is also laid on my ipad cover. I think it would look cool in a red frame. 

Darcy x

Some pages

Hi there, I have been trying to keep up with Wanderlust, however there is so much of it I am way behind. I am doing ok with the one collage challenge and the Wanderlust pages get done when I have time. Sadly the classes are on hold for now. I do download them all and will get to them when I can. 

So here is a bit of a catchup with pages. 

This page was for the prompt 'what are you most grateful for' After 11 operations in 11 yrs I have a lot to be grateful for regarding the nhs. This was a quick doodle of an old fashioned ambulance. 

Another prompt was 'fingerprint' This isn't mine, it is a doodle of a fingerprint, just done with a black pen. The background was lots of layered stencilling. 

This one doesn't look like much, but it is actually finished. The prompt was 'what is different today from a year ago' This represents my swimming journey and there is a lot of muted text in the centre section talking about this subject. 

This prompt was 'what are you passionate about' For me it is colour. I started by writing words associated with art, using Crayola Slickstix so they could be blended a little and blurred. {The background is ink through a piece of tapestry canvas}

Over the top I added a colour wheel using the new stamp set from Everything Art.EEA03 I also added painted fabric flowers and circles, and finally the stamped text from one of my own stamps. EDY18

Darcy x

Ballerina

When I was a kid I danced.. not just randomly, I had lessons. In fact I was made to go 4 times a week and I hated it. I took lessons from being 3yrs old to about 12yrs old. I was so glad to stop. I did all my grades, in ballroom, latin, modern sequence and disco and took part in competitions, I wore stupid frilly dresses with net underskirts and I had ringlets in my hair and I hated all of it. it was never my choice, and after I stopped I never danced again until I was about 40. A friend talked me into trying tap dancing, something I had never done before and it was exhausting but good fun. for the first time in my life I was actually enjoying dancing. Maybe that was more to do with getting new shoes!

Now ballet is something I have never done, I have an idealistic view of it, that I would be graceful and beautiful ... that I would somehow lose 60lbs by putting on the shoes and would grow 6 inches taller. Of course the reality is I would look like a fairy elephant! 

But the shoes... I want the shoes... and not just because I love shoes. 

Ballet shoes have something magical about them..something nostalgic and ethereal. 

So i made a ballet page. 

I started with PaperArtsy Infusions, I painted the page first with Satin Glaze, sprinkled on the infusions and then lightly dragged more glaze to seal them. 

Next I sketched my shoes. 

I then painted them, sorry no progress shots. I used Prima watercolours and just built up the layers using pinks, grey, brown and white. 

On either side of the shoes I added more Infusions this time in blue. I allowed them to soak a little so that the walnut started to show through then I dried them. 

In parts they were  a little dark, so I flicked on some clean water and then dabbed this off to remove some colour. 

I added shading to the shoes using Derwent XL charcoal 

Added some flicks of white paint. 

and a border using black Crayola slickstix.

Finally I wanted to add some text. Initially I wanted to use the text from the Everything Art stamp {#3} but the stamps were too small for what I wanted. So I used a white pen to write the same text out, adding more words of my own. 

I am really pleased with this page, it is as close as I will ever get to ballet lol. 

what did you always want to do but never could? why don't you create a page about it. 

Darcy x