ooooh two posts in one night...!!! dont forget to read the one below as well..!!

Right, its 4.47 am and yes i am blogging..??? Why am I awake at this time..?? I am not wide awake because I am journaling and blogging - I am journaling and blogging because I am wide awake, if that makes any sense to you...!!!! Will whoever has run off with my brain cut off switch, please bring it back before I die of exhaustion...!!! I am soooooo tired but wide awake at the same time...heeeeeeelllllllllppppppp.....!!!!! lol. so what to do when you are wide awake again, journal of course. Only snag, I have had a major tidy up and am back using the home studio so don't have a lot of materials in my room, including scissors. Couldn't go and get stuff as our Maisie is fast asleep in there. So how am I gonna journal without an image..??? I have a large canvas, which I frikkin love, hanging on the wall opposite my bed, so I thought I would try and draw it. I haven't attempted anything like this for years, so knew it was going to be a challenge, but what the heck. He who dares wins. I had changed all my bedding earlier for another set of , yes you guessed it, fresh white covers. What was I thinking..?? lmao. But I just love crisp white sheets..But it probably wasn't a good idea to use charcoal as my medium, was it ?

I took as many photos photos as I could remember whilst I was doing it, so here we go with an early morning step by step tutorial.

Here's my canvas in all its glory.

The pages were pre prepared last week, so the first step was to try and sketch in the design.

I gave her short hair and my wings tattoo..!! All with a hard charcoal pencil.

I then swapped to a very soft one and added all the shading, blending with my finger as we go. Add the charcoal sparingly to start with and then you can slowly build it up.

I then wrote the lyrics of a Nolan Porter song across the pages.

I used a white watercolour pencil to add the highlights.

I drew a scalloped border and coloured it with my watercolour pencils.

I then applied water with a brush to blend. I separated the lines of writing with a mixture of charcoal and watercolour crayon, rubbed in.

I outlined the scallop border in opaque white pen, and wrote a quote.

I went back over this with the charcoal and black oil pastel to blend.

So there we go the finished article...

I love it, and am stunned that it actually looks like its supposed to. Why don't you have a go at mimicking something in your house. Please leave me a comment and as usual a stack of goodies could be winging its way to you..!!!

Enjoy xx