A Brand New 2017

Hello, a very happy new year to you!

2016 was quite a year for many people and that includes me! I've moved house and then spent every day for many months working on it. I've also said a sad goodbye to 3 of my baby chicks as they went their separate ways seeking their fortunes.
2017 heralds a brand new start for me, I haven't posted here for ages as there just wasn't any time to do artwork let alone write a blogpost. It's good to be back in the bloggesphere even though I am aware that there might not actually be anyone out there reading this any more.😉 If you're out there, thankyou for visiting! ♡ ♡ ♡
So would you like to see my newly spruced up website?

Click here for the link if you'd like to visit the site and see it in all its glory. ;)

 I was given some lovely gifts for my birthday and christmas. One of them was a set of Distress Crayons.
The page above from my sketchbook was first covered in a layer of gesso to give it some texture. When this was dry I drew onto it with my Distress Crayons. They're very soft and a bit like a lipstick to draw with. I then added a little water on my finger to move the pigment around and to blend it together. While the pigment is still wet, you can lay a stencil over it and then rub through the stencil with a dry cloth to reveal the shapes as I've done here. The white lines that you can see were made with the end of an old knitting needle.

Can you see the pale blue texture at the top of the picture? That's created by the underlying dried gesso.

I love playing with new art products don't you?

Another gift I received was a set of Tombow Duel Brush Pens.

 Now these are lovely because they blend together so beautifully. You see the stripes on the dress? I only used 3 colours for this, yellow pink and blue. The green and the purple were created entirely from the overlap of 2 colours. I don't have a purple pen in my set so I was very pleased to see this effect!

On the bottom left of the picture, in the background I laid down solid yellow and then drew with a green pen on top for the leaves and a pink pen for the flowers. It makes a lovely bright orange doesn't it?

The bird was done in layers too. It was a solid pink with a yellow pen creating the red looking spots of the bird's back and a blue pen creating the bird's belly.

I love using these pens because on one end they have a brush shapes and the other end's like a fine-tip. I can see I'm going to have a lot of fun with these.

Thankyou for visiting today, I shall be back with more updates soon.

♡✶♡✶♡

Jess xx