 Hello everybody, we're here working in my Deena Wakely Media Journal and I happen to have the back side of one of the pages in the journal that's made out of cotton watercolor paper and I'm using my left hand, my non-dominant hand and a plain, big ballpoint pen to roughly sketch out the shape and style of a face over the collaged background. I'm using my left hand because I have less control on purpose I'm doing that and I get a looser, more sketchy feel to the face which is what I want. So I'm just sketching out, I have no plan, I'm just doing what is basically coming out of the pen. She ends up with some sort of a hat on and dreadlocks sort of hair, not exactly sure. You can interpret it the way you choose to. As usual my girls usually have large eyes, larger lips, it seems to be the kind of girl I draw more often than not. Now I'm just using my dominant hand to darken up the lines not only so that you can see them better but so she can show up better on the page. There's a little piece of paper sticking up so I'm using a glue stick to stick it back down. I'm not looking to completely cover up the background but I'm looking to the background to accent the face that we're drawing on here. I want to keep it loose and sketchy and suggestive. I don't want to be pristine and perfect about it that's not who I am. I am taking a Uniball Signo gel pen in black and I'm darkening up certain things about the image that I know I want to have darker lines. Initially when I'm doing this I'm doing it like I do my daily evening sketches and I'm thinking I'm going to keep it that way and I'm going to add a little bit of the Bible gel high gliders and then leave it at that. That's not exactly what happens. So I take some clear gesso after I've got all that pen on there and I'm sure it's dry and I give the whole thing a coat of clear gesso because I know whatever I do to it next that I've got a lot of different textures and things going on and I want it to really stick well. So some of the glue that I use to stick the collage background on would maybe make it so that the paint or gel high glider or whatever I use to put on there would not stick well. So you saw me there heat setting the pen because I really wanted it to be dry. I didn't want it to smear too much. It may still a little bit but I didn't want it to do too much and I gave it a good coat of clear gesso and then I let it sit until that was completely dry and before I came back and did anything else. So now we're back and I decide to take these watercolor paints that I mixed by mixing all of my different watercolors together, all my yellows, all my reds, all my oranges to make this custom color of paint, paints I should say here in this palette, in this watercolor palette. I'm using it and the colors in it to help me start to highlight and shade the face. So we're using the warmer colors to indicate lightness, brightness and warmth. We're going to use the cooler colors for shadow. I rarely if ever paint faces with natural skin tones. That's just not me and I think that it's more fun and challenging to do it this way. Again I'm being loose and sloppy with the paint that's on purpose and I'm putting the red and yellow where I think the sun is coming from on the face and I'm using the purple and some of the graphite colors to help me with the shadow. So that little block I'm rubbing my wet brush on is a art graph block of water soluble graphite and I don't remember what color that was but it's a dark brownish black. I'll try to put the color of it in the description below if I can figure it out and I just keep adding colors. The orange is also a warm color and keep doing it and I'm alternating with putting paint on and blotting some off pushing it around with water until I get it to where I'm happy. So now I've grabbed my box of neocolor two crayons but you can't see it slightly off camera. I'm using the white one to lighten up a few things like the sclera or the white part of the eye and to add a few highlights like really white bright highlights. This isn't at all where I thought I would be going with this face by the way. I had no intention when I started of using any of the neocolor twos on there but the more I worked with it the more it seemed like it was meant to be and I start off with the white one but I end up adding some blues and other colors the neocolor two crayons for those that don't know are water soluble crayons, waxy water soluble crayons so any waxy water soluble crayons you have in your stash of stuff will work and you can see as we add color and shadow to the face it does really start to pop out from the background. I have something about, there's something for me about giving my girls turquoise colored eyes, I have no idea what that is about but you'll see me sort of pushing and pulling at the paint adding light, adding dark, taking some away, adding it back on and that's just that's my part of my normal process. It's not about being perfect because I don't do perfection but it's about creating something interesting and continuing to add and subtract my mediums and my paint and my marks until I find something that I'm really happy with and if you hear a funny noise in the audio here it's because I have a cough drop in my mouth so I really like that she's a little bit glaring because she's wet but I'm really liking that so I'm just sort of fine tuning the marks I'm not really wanting to change it a whole lot right now it will eventually get to the point where you have to just let it dry and there's nothing that says like I'm doing now that you can't add the neocolor twos and then add some more paint what of the water color paint on top of it why not why can't you it's your art journal you should be making your art your way don't listen to anybody else so add it take it away add it take it away the little white thing that I'm using to blot some of the paint up is a little piece of a Mr. Clean Magic eraser it works really well to lift watercolor paint just FYI so at this point I'm pretty sure she's just about ready to just let her sit and let her dry I really love the way she looks on the page it wasn't at all what I intended when I got started but it is a beautiful nonetheless so now I found a quote in my stash of quotes that I'm gonna add on to her and I am just trimming it a bit and then gluing it on and I shouldn't say quote because I think it's just a single word and it says inspiration I love that I have lots of words and quotes cut out of magazines that I use in my journal and I hope this gave you some ideas of what you can do and I hope that you have fun with it and enjoy the process don't forget to like share and subscribe and above all go out and have a great day do something nice for yourself because you deserve it play in your journals have some fun and share if you'd like to you can do that over in my Facebook group the links in the description I'll talk to you later bye guys