Pen & Ink Deco

Here's the second and last deco page of the day, another one created by Tam. The pages are the blue you see here.

What I love most about doing ATCs and decos is that they push me to try new things; they give me the courage to experiment. This is the kind of thing I would not normally do. I was looking around my art room for something to draw and my eyes rested upon this old doll I purchased at one of those junky antique stores years ago. She's unusual - not sure what culture she represents, but she is swathed in gold and silver fabric with tiny rhinestones all over her jewelry and headdress.

I decided she'd be fun to draw and good face-drawing practice to boot. I used the Sakura .005 and colored her in with Prismacolor CPs. Her arms and hands were doing that "walk like an Egyptian" thing and I totally screwed them up, so salvaged it by making an oval and cutting her out. Then I used my exacto knife to remove the background as well, leaving the oval outline.

After gluing her onto the deco page, I drew the flowers and tiny circles around the outside of her oval, colored them in and filled all the "gems" on her with silver gel pen. I decided this was a good time to try out my new diamond glaze on each gem. It gives them a raised appearance, like little diamonds. That was fun. I love trying new things. I also like that I made this up as I went along, with no plan whatsoever. I should do that more often - see where my creativity leads me.