Wanderlust Week 40: Limited colour palette

I must admit I had never heard of Leslie Wood until her Wanderlust lesson this week and now I'm so happy that I have discovered her wonderful, quirky art. The lesson she taught us involved using a limited colour palette. She made me look at browns and greys in a completely different light. I do love my colours, as you know, but there's something really appealing to me about using a heavily muted colour scheme  as well.

Leslie's lesson included an Alice in Wonderland inspired character against a mottled background. The only colours I used, other than white, are raw umber and greyish blue. The mottled effect is achieved by spraying water on the background and then lifting off the top layer where the paint still wet. I also got some unexpected scratches from my brayer, which added to the texture. This is what my mottled background looked like:

I drew my character using simple shapes with a charcoal pencil and painted it mainly with white and raw umber mixed with white. I blended the charcoal with a paper stump. I added some hearts to balance the composition, but I kept it very simple, in line with the colour scheme. I thought of cutting the hearts from checkerboard patterned paper - I even tried it - but they seemed too harsh and took away the focus from my character. I like the simplicity and childish innocence of this page. This kind of style is definitely close to my heart! Here are a few shots:

I made this page the same size as my LifeBook and I will include it at the end of the year. It will fit in nicely with my other pages. Later, inspired by Leslie, I might even try creating a themed journal of these quirky characters - you can see hers here.