Whodunnit? - Journal52 Week Five

Hello All.

Today I have a page for sharing that I made for my Journal52 prompt, week #5. The theme is 'Television'. I don't watch a ton of television, but when I do I like to watch mostly detective shows. So I decided to make my page a detective theme. Incidentally, I do read a lot and I also like to read detective novels. I do not know what it is about these types of subjects I enjoy..but it seems to be a pretty universal human trait. Is it the way the good guy always prevails over the criminal in the end? Is it a connection with the old hunter and prey feelings from when we were less civilised? Or is it just the need to solve a puzzle? Whatever it is, I enjoy it and so I am happy to share my page :)


As usual, I started off with a pencil sketch. For this loose leaf journal I am using 7 1/2" X 14" cold pressed watercolor paper. 


Next I decided I wanted to add actual detective book pages for my background. A smarter person would have done their background first before sketching..but..I just worked around my sketch adding the pages with Mod Podge.


I wanted the printed pages to be less stark so I went over them with watered down gesso. Then I did full strength gesso over the places where the pages went into my sketch. I also firmed up the sketch again with my pencil.


For this step I decided to go ahead and lay down a color layer with just acrylic first. The reason being that I had some areas of clean watercolor paper and others where there was Mod Podge over lap. I wanted a layer of all one type to start out before doing my shading and highlight layers. Once that layer was dry then I added in the details using water soluble crayons and blending with white acrylic paint and water. Then I used my Posca white and black pens for the fine details.


Next I needed a title. I chose the classic 'Whodunnit?' and drew it first with a pencil. Then I went over the pencil lines using my black Posca pen and made them more solid and stylised. Finally I added highlights with the white Posca pen.


To finish up my background I wanted some smudgey dirty looking stuff to represent the clues a C.S.I. might be looking at. I didn't want it to be overwhelming. I used a homemade circles stencil to add in some spots using a blend of titanium buff and umber. I used a make up sponge for control.


Finally I took a brush and made my leftover stencil colors really watery and then did splatters and a few brush smudges.

I hope you enjoyed my representation of detective stories :)
<3 Shel

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