LB2015 : Inner warrior princess

School holidays were a great time for me to catch up on some Life Book lessons. This next project was created by Andrea Gomoll. First up was to sketch the face, and then think about what symbols represented those things sacred to us - what supports our inner warrior. This was an interesting exercise - I started by making a bit of brainstormed list, and then started sketching

Well I didn't JUST sketch did I? cos I have to have a butterfly and I have a lovely stamp, and then I saw that feather stamp I carved, and I ♥ that bit of tape that I put on her arm like a tattoo - the colours, the shapes - I couldn't draw it just like that....the printed word is important to me, and I realised I could add some other important words as part of her hair. And I needed to include music, and lace, and a couple of important symbols of my kiwi-ness and that pohutukawa wrapping paper had just the right colour and shape.

Before I started adding watercolour, I needed to add some kind of tribal markings or tattoos. I have some really cool small stamps so used them for the extra touches I needed. I used black StazOn ink for all my stamping because it is completely waterproof for the next layers - it's a bit dark at the moment, but I'm sure it will all come together in the end.

Then I started adding watercolours, followed by a black pitt pen to outline and white sharpie pen to highlight. 

I had so much fun I forgot to take process photos! So here are some close-ups before the full reveal. Click on any photo to see it even larger.

She took up most of the page, but there was enough background to have a bit of fun with. I started by laying down a wash of light turquoise watercolour and sprinkling with salt like I did HERE. It creates a really cool mottled effect. Then I wanted to add some subtle details so used metallic gold on my hand-carved circle stamp, distress ink on a swirl stamp which I softened with white dots, and white paint through drywall joint tape

This was a lesson I didn't think I'd do, but decided to have a go at just for fun. It was no stress and so great to get my watercolours out again. Here's my inner warrior princess complete :

You can see all my posts about Life Book HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my Life Book projects HERE