Journal52: Prompt 06 - The Lost Art of Love Letters #Journal52 #LifeImitatesDoodles #ArtJournaling

I've joined a free year-long journal prompt group, Journal52, run by Chelle Stein.  My goal is to keep it quick and easy, no planning, no fretting, no criticizing, just exploration and fun.

The yellows in this scan aren't correct--they are much lighter and, except for the heart, there is a green cast to them in real life.
Sorry, I didn't take any pictures of my process.

I kept my pages simple, despite starting out with the wrong blue.  I meant to pick up Ultramarine Blue but mixed Primary Cyan and Quinacridone Burnt Orange instead.  Ultramarine Blue and Quin Burnt Orange make a nice black.  Primary Cyan and Quin Burnt Orange? Meh.

I made up for that by dry-brushing on Ultramarine Blue in areas.

The whole layout was done in layer.

My heart was cut out from different paper, painted with Titanium Buff, and glued on, with some of the edges left unglued.  I tore strips from a music sheet and glued them down.

Then I started adding color, pure Ultramarine Blue, pure Hansa Yellow Medium, and pure Quinacridone Burnt Orange (which is the red color for this *triad).  When this layer of color dried, I started my layering process--adding a thin **glaze of blue, letting it dry, spritzing with alcohol and then wiping off some paint with a baby wipe.  I'd repeat with yellow, then with burnt orange.  I did this several times.  Sometimes I used glazing medium, and sometimes I ***dry-brushed the paint on.

I added the beams of white last, using both the baby-wipe and dry brushing methods.

The words of the prompt were stamped on, and outlined with a Sakura gellyroll Moonlight pen (it's yellow but the scan washed the color out)

A Pigma Micron pen .01 point was used to write my love letter.

*A triad is a painting done using only three colors.  I also used white so I pushed the triad concept a little. There are many different triads possible.  I was shooting for one that was close to using primary colors--red, yellow, and blue, but I used burnt orange as a stand in for my red, because I wanted earth tones rather than bright, intense colors that would fight the illusion of my light beams.

**A glaze is simply a thin layer of paint or medium that is painted over another layer.  The paint can be thinned down with water or glazing medium.  Glazing medium keeps your color more intense, but is a bit spendy.

***Dry-brushing is a technique where you add a very small amount of paint onto a dry brush, and scrub the paint (lightly) across the page.  This gives you a broken effect where other colors or the surface of the paper show through.

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