If I were a mermaid

I'm booked in for a 'Drawing in your Journal' class at Art from the Heart in Harrogate with Kate Crane. so I thought I would dust off the cobwebs in my frontal lobe and practice doing a bit of drawing. It used to come so easy to me as a cocky 17 year old at college, but now I have too many distractions with daily life and everything. So I surprised myself when I sat down in front of the tele the other night to draw a mermaid, I thought I'd be there for hours, rubbing it out and starting again, but she was there in about 30 minutes! Ironically the lobsters took me longer to do. 

I'm still relatively new to this art journaling game, and I still have so much to learn, its exciting times for me, I'm enjoying the journey, being inspired by so many blogs out there, I love it!

I like anything to do with the sea. Every time I go to the beach I always come back with my pockets full of little bits of rocks and shells. I wonder what happens beneath those waves. What would you do if you were a mermaid? This is what I would do.

So here goes, the materials I've used were the glorious London Blue & Vibrant Turquoise Dylusions Inks for the background.  I have this old wooden rubber stamp that has a snow pattern on it.  I dabbed it in water and stamped it on the page to blot out little white dots on the fab blue background.  It worked so well as a bubble effect all over.  The hanging plants, the fish, the sea horses, the jelly fish and the coral are all the fantastic Lavinia Stamps, they're such good quality with loads of detail, Tracey is so talented.  I used many different shades of blue to give the illusion of distance with all the stamps.

I drew some foreground plants straight on the page with a black gel pen, and used a lighter shade pencil to draw plants in the distance. I love my little happy lobsters. I had heaps of fun making this page.