Blue Spread

As some of you know I participated in the Sketchbook Project 2011 (and you can see my entire album online on their site) and it was such a great experience that I signed up for the 2012 Project as soon as it was announced. My chosen theme this year is monochromatic but I aim to make the journal as a whole as colourful as I can make it. Every spread is dedicated to one colour in all its hues, tints and shades. Some colours will have more than one spread dedicated to them depending on the amount of pages I have available. The sketchbook this year is another Moleskine journal but I'm pleased to say that the pages are a bit more substantial than last year so I have been able to do a bit more painting and colouring.

On the right hand page I've used my watercolour pencils to made a multitude of squares in a grid, all in in a different hue of blue. I collaged on top using torn-out magazine bits. The peacock was also from a magazine and reminded me so much of our recent pea hen episode. The left hand page is painted and I did an alcohol transfer on it using a transparency sheet. I read about this method in a book but as it was an American publication I did not have either the right transparency sheets or the right handwash product she recommended (this contains the alcohol part in gel), so I do what I usually do in such situations. I try the technique anyway but using what I have to hand which in this case was a Staples inkjet transparency and a UK handwash product which was in gel form and contained alcohol. And lo and behold, it worked fine. That's how the delphinium picture landed in the centre of the page.

I added a definiion of blue (or bleu) from a vintage French dictionary and added some doodling as well as Japanese tape to the spread and then it was done, apart from the 3 shiny embellishments on the right (hard to see the sparkle on the scan) and another vintage quotation, this time in English, which reads: lace my bodice blue. And of course my own handwriting, to write: I'm having the blues!