Big Moon

 Hi everyone. We're getting close to the middle of January, just a couple of days and we'll be there-already.

Last summer I bought myself this drawing journal. I picked it up because it was a marker journal, and I wanted to try more  marker drawing  without  having the colors seep through onto the next page.

What I didn't plan  was that this journal with so many white pages would be rather intimidating .  I didn't use it for several months. That may sounds strange as I use journals all the time, but I wanted this one for drawing, or should I say in my case, practicing.  Specifically with markers. I'm not as confident marker drawing (at least not yet) as I am splashing paint around on a page.  Although I write my daily journal and use some small marker doodles in that format, moving them onto a large journal page was a little scary.

My next reason for letting it sit was this question. What to practice draw?

I recently convinced myself that I just needed to pick  up the notebook, open it to a page and make some marks. No penciling in a piece first.  Just drawing straight with my markers. Good, bad or whatever.

One of my first pages was just making this rough and tumble plaid out of colors I really like.

Then I realized I could turn this into an art journal page.  This small realization made me excited.

I thought the  ink dropped on paper filter (I made awhile back) looked like the moon, and the colors on it matched my background.  So I rubbed some black and grey ink on my page, not enough to dull it too much but just enough to give a slight idea of night. Then I added the paper moon.

 

Last fall  while watching something bland on TV, I was looking at used rubber stamps on eBay.  I came across a set of 50 stamps that I really liked. There were some  woodblock looking people (you can see them above) dancing and also some other items to create mini scenes. The problem was the price was about twice what I wanted to pay for them, but I bookmarked them anyhow. A couple of days later I got an email from the seller, slashing the price 50%. I guess they must have been sitting online for too long. and when I showed some interested, she figured she might be able to unload them. Since they were right in my price range now, I picked them up. 

I've  used them to create this circle of dancers. A warm summer night dancing  out under the stars with no covid to worry about sounds like fun to me right now. 

I doodled in the musical notes as well as the word dance.

I am linking up to Art Journal Journey and this month's challenge of Favorite Things.  I love the background plaid colors, the dancers wiggling to some funky music, and also this journal. (The paper holds up really well with paint, glue and matte medium too. If you are curious, it is a Bee Creative journal.) Not only do I like my filter paper moon, but the real moon in the sky is also a favorite thing too.

Thanks for visiting my blog!