It's all there in black and white...

This is one of my pages for the Creative Every Day 2013 challenge (you can read more about the challenge here) :

Made using Black Marble Dylusions ink, black and white watercolor and gouache and Pitt pen for the journaling.

I really like that the theme of the month is entirely optional at Creative Every Day...the point is to get creative, no matter what you choose to do!  I like that message.  But the March theme really seemed like fun to me: Black and White.  I have been reading about tone and depth and scale and shading and all that good stuff, so I thought it might be a good challenge to see what I could do with just black and white.  And this little lady came popping out of my brain and splatted on the page!  I like her very much...she makes me want to try using just one color and white more often and seeing what I can end up with.  Maybe a whole rainbow of girls.

The biggest majority of the girl is made using only Dylusions spray ink in Black Marble (and water).  I just unscrewed the cap and dipped my paint brush right in!  The major outlines are pure spray ink, and the shading is just where I touched water to the edges of those outlines.  Since the Dylusions react with water, I got some great shading with only water on the brush.  Did I ever tell you how much I love the Dylusions?  Well it's true...I love them...le sigh...

I will have to go back through the rest of the Creative Every Day themes and see what peaks my interest.  I had such a good time with this page, that I think I would like to do Black and White more often.  I think it made me pay more attention to the shading and details, knowing I wouldn't have any other colors to distract the old peepers from my mistakes!  

I really enjoy seeing how my stuff is changing...thanks to the kindness of others I am starting to look at my pages with a less critical eye...or maybe I am getting better!  I don't know, but I'll take either option!  I was kindly reminded recently that the reason we art journal is because it's enjoyable...we play, we get better at it, we have fun, we keep going!  It so great to have a wonderful community of people out there who encourage, teach and share the love with each other.  These folks have certainly helped to make my time spent being creative much more enjoyable and I am so thankful to them for it.