Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Whimsical Cursive


I have been playing with my little whimsical pieces a lot lately, and realized that I had a problem.  Well, a “need”.

I needed to be able to emphasize a word or have one word bigger than the others.  I needed to have a way to create contrast.

The problem is, I’m using gel pens that are monoline.  There’s only one size of the line that it makes.  So off to the drafting table I went to experiment. 

First I used my Crayon Cursive with a black crayon and sparkly gel pen highlights.  But that ended up being actually too big.  And I wasn’t wild about my results with a colored pencil.  It needed to “go” with my gel pen hand printing better or something.

Then I tried drawing a cursive-style, coloring in the thicks and thins with the gel pen, but I was sorely lacking in enough skill to pull that off.

Then I tried using two colors of gel pens for an almost double-stroke, which looked crummy, but it gave me the idea to use a colored pencil to “shadow” the gel pen line.  And that looked kinda neat.  And soft.  And I generally love soft.

And I don’t know what got into me, but somehow I got the idea of putting polka dots on top of the monoline.  Polka dots??  I truly have no idea how that occurred to me.  But I tried it, and they were fun, and sorta worked!  So, yay!



Then I graduated from a “shadow” to a “halo”.  It reminds me of the outlined words of my junior high days.  Hahaha  Did everyone else do that, too?  Outline around complete words, kinda like puffy clouds?    Ah, youth.

Anyway, that’s what this new combination is:  my fun cursive made with a gel pen + a halo done with a colored pencil + polka dots using a gel pen. 

Oh, and done with neon colors, too!  How much fun is that?!

And just think of all the possibilities:  you can use the same color for both for a low-contrast look, or something like neon yellow dots on top of a neon green cursive for a high-contrast, very whimsical look.  (I find myself using that combo a lot.)





So that’s the latest from the studio…  Fun, fun, fun!!
I hope it brings a smile to your face!

XOXO,
Lucky Dog 


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