
...by adding a little stem stitch outline...





A couple of ATCs to show this morning. The first is Peter the little bird I drew yesterday on a scrap of note paper while listening to The Best of Natural History Podcast from the BBC; he turned out rather sad with his droopy bottom beak. The second, Paul, is a test run for the postcard swap coming up on ArtWeMail that involves drawing on fabric and using crayons to colour in the outline. The background here is a pale grey cotton. The outline is OK for this scale, but I think for a larger image to fit a postcard, I may need to use a thicker pen. I found that dry watercolour pencils worked better than my rather hard crayon pencils. On a larger scale I may try Crayola type crayons on the larger areas.
I've borrowed a stamp and now have a dozen images, half on white card and half on cream. I've been attempting to colour the ducks using watercolour pencils in various shades of blue, a damp brush to blend the colour, and a very hit or miss method. I definitely need better specs, as now I have scanned them I can see how much I need to improve my technique! Now that I've done them, I'm not sure how I shall use them on a card, or with what caption, but I have enjoyed the process. If anyone can think of a suitable sentiment to go with them, it would be very much appreciated.
This one looks skew-wiff, but it isn't really; the bow pushed it off line in the scanner.
This next picture just goes to show that I need to clean my scanner bed; rather a lot of extraneous blobs on the background, including the little bird. This is the latest stamp carving. I was happy with it until I decided to put the line up the middle; now I don't think I like it.