Playing with Water Soluble Pastels

Here are pages from my journal that I did last week.  I hadn't played with my water soluble pastels for awhile so I took them out one evening.  I didn't want to turn on any lights, so I decided to sketch by the light of the television as Keith and I tortured ourselves with the Food Network.

I used an ochre yellow pastel and began sketching.  I began with a fluid line and before I knew it, I was sketching faces.  The next day, I softly blended the features and I liked the ghostly appearance that resulted.  I darkened some of the features and added hair with a black pastel and did more blending.  I added blue to the shadow areas and more faces with the same blue, softening each layer.  

I continued playing with my pastels and another face emerged.  I recently discovered that I can print right to left writing each letter backwards as easily as printing normally.  Who knew!  I had no idea I could do this and it was a fluke discovery.  I incorporated printing in this style on this journal spread and I think it adds to the overall feeling of mystique created by the chiaroscuro.

Speaking of faces, my colored pencil drawing is coming along nicely.  I'm really enjoying my very laid back class.  My classmates are awesome and we're rapidly becoming friends.  I've learned a lot about colored pencil - mostly that it's nothing to be hurried!

I'm not finished with her face, but the self proclaimed "queen of color" had to get away from the skin tones for awhile and add some color!  The leaves are a pain (it crossed my mind to put a head wrap on her!), but I decided to stay true to the original image.  I only work on her during class.  The lighting there is fabulous!

I've also been using colored pencil more in my journal.  This detailed spread is collage (The sun/moon mirror, the tree and the head, torn from an old Design Tuscano catalog), Pilot VBall pen, and Prismacolor pencils.  I worked on it mostly in the evenings.  It was inspired by my prompt for March 10th: "I don't want to", and the song by Gavin Degraw, "I don't want to be".  The writing is lyrics from that song.

I hope you're having fun in your journal.  I hope you're experimenting and breaking through "blocks" that you may have.  Most of all, I hope you're finding time each day to "Celebrate, LOVE, and Create!"