Winter Journal

It's winter here in the Southern Hemisphere so I thought my new journal should reflect the theme. The first piece I completed was an ice princess and today I painted a penguin.

The ice princess is acrylic on thin canvas with prismacolor pencil for detail, shadow & highlights. I really like the texture coming through. She was quick and easy, not least because I didn't have to match her eyes!

I drew my penguin from memory on some scrapbooking paper. When I wasn't sure of things like colouring and how their feet looked I checked online. Once the penguin was painted using acrylics I added rub ons and washi tape and stamps and stencils to the background but allowed them to leak onto the penguin to help integrate it into the page. The words took a long time to do as it was hard to make them stand out from all the busy background. I wrote them with a blue glitter sharpie, then shadowed them with tombow markers, then added snow on the top, then went over them with a yellow glitter sharpie (to tie in with the penguin's yellow), then wrote them again in very fine black pen. Phew! Last of all I went round the penguin with some grey watercolour to give set him off from the background a little.

I'm looking forward to more winter themed work in my new journal and plan to tie it in with woodland creature theme for this month. Owls in the snow anyone?