Scribble Stick Mandala Monday

Have you been watching Dina Wakley's Demo With Dina series on her Art of Dina Wakley FaceBook page? If not, you need to pencil in some time at 1pm Eastern on Tuesdays and Thursdays because not only is Dina a wonderful, inspiring teacher; she's very funny and entertaining. She is also a true friend and supporter of independent art stores, so each session she's added a feature called Store Spotlight. Can you guess who the featured store was this past Thursday, April 30th? Here's a hint: it was The Ink Pad! If you missed the live streaming session it's archived HERE. I recommend it, not just because it featured TIP (tho that was cool!); but also, Dina was making art with her Scribble Sticks, and I was so inspired that I immediately had to get mine out and have a play, using some of the tips and techniques Dina used in the demo.

 
In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that at the moment, The Ink Pad does not currently have any Scribble Sticks in stock. They're on order from Ranger, all three sets, including the third one which contains the metallic colors Dina used in the demo. On the plus side, at the moment, anything you buy from TIP that's backordered, will ship to you for free!

At the moment, I only own the first set of Dina Wakley Scribble Sticks, though I can tell you that five minutes into Dina's demonstration, I had already texted Anna to say I neeeeeeeeeeeded the rest, lol! But the limited palette did not stop me from having a blast. For my first experiment, I worked on plain Canson Watercolor Paper, and basically just tried different ways to lay down the color to blend the shades, to add and subtract water, etc. I found that a wet crayon lays down color that is much more blend-able, but also a bit sheer. Scribbling with a dry crayon and then going over with a wet brush will result in a much harder line, though you can still "pull" some of the pigment around. At the end of my play session, I couldn't resist adding what Dina calls The Pox... those awesome splatters that you get by getting a Scribble Stick thoroughly wet and flicking it at your paper! When the entire page was bone dry, I added details with a fine-tipped, black Pigma Micron pen. (This worked because I had blended my Scribble Stick pigment quite a bit, so it was pretty flat to the page. If you have beautiful lumps of pigment, you'll want to avoid using a pen with a "cloggable" nib; stick with a Stabilo Pencil, a Posca Paint Pen, or a fountain pen!)

My second page is entirely a fluke. I started drawing a mandala with the Scribble Sticks on vintage ledger paper and discovered almost immediately that it was not going to hold up to more than the most minimal contact with water. So I put it aside, let it dry, and basically just used it as a "test" page to try out colors of my Dina Wakley Media Heavy Body Acrylics; to see what the Gel Press Petite Butterfly from Sally Lynn MacDonald's Sweet Nature set would look like, stamped with  inside a circle; to see what Michelle Ward's Manhole Hex stamp would look like inside the butterfly, and so forth. But... as I worked away without any expectations... I found that I quite liked where it was going and instead of switching to a "real" piece I just kept going. I added the word, "fly" using a sponge dauber dipped in Dina's Evergreen HB Acrylic, with Stencil Girl's Vintage Typewriter Alphabet (Lowercase). Then Dina's Spaced Dots stencil with the even drier daubers that had a bit of blue or green paint on them. After the page was entirely and completely dry I decided to try one more experiment: rolling it into my vintage Royal typewriter and adding --in the more sparsely painted areas-- a quote I found online, "Flying starts on the ground. The more grounded you are, the higher you can fly".

As a matter of fact, I didn't plan to make my two pieces be two half circles that would fit together, but when I saw that it was serendiptiously happening, I confess that I made the most of it by limiting the palette (mostly Night, Turquoise, Sky and Lime); by echoing some of the same shapes and by trimming the two pieces so they would line up perfectly. I'm both surprised and pleased by the result!

I hope you'll check out Demo With Dina and then afterwards, that you'll be inspired to make some art of your very own! ♥