Art vs. Housework

Well, there's no contest, is there? 

I had fun with this page. The flowers came first, coloured with Derwent aquatone pencils. Then the background was filled in with yellow ink and stamped down the right hand side with a multi-colour ink pad.

But the yellow was looking a bit pale. I wanted something deeper. I outlined the flowers with a black Sharpie, but what to do about the background? 

That's when I spotted the tub of petroleum jelly on my desk that I bought to try out a technique from Surface Treatment Workshop by McElroy and Wilson. Perfect! So I slapped some on top of the flowers and painted turquoise acrylic over the top. The recommendation was to use a baby-wipe to clean off the petroleum jelly but I grabbed a plastic card instead. Now it was looking better. I did the same again with a darker blue. 

Now the flowers needed a little more colour so I used some water-soluble oil pastels to deepen the colours, used a liquid paper pen to add the white  highlights. I had to find a way to put the wording on the page as the petroleum jelly left a coating that pens wouldn't write on. The 'headline' was stamped on to white paper and cut out, and the journalling I wrote on a piece of vellum and stuck it down with gel medium. A few highlights with white and yellow water-soluble oil pastels finished off the page. 

Better than housework :)

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