Doodling with Donna

Painting, watercolouring and doodling, to be exact.

That's the name of the class I took last night with artist/teacher Donna Downey (http://donnadowney.typepad.com/) at a scrapbooking store I had never visited before called Stamping Bella (http://www.stampingbella.com/) in north Toronto (just north of Yonge and Steeles).

We started with these pages, made out of acrylic and chipboard. The acrylic pages look blue because they are covered with a thin film of blue plastic, which we peeled off before starting to paint the pages. There are 8 pages in total, about 6 inches by 6 inches in size.

Donna told us that we were the very last class to whom she was going to teach this project, as she has taught it to about 750 students already and she'd done with it. We used acrylic paint, watercolour crayons, white gel pens, eyelets, ribbon, stamps and black ink to decorate our pages. We didn't get finished by the end of the class but left with a set of instructions and a working knowledge of the techniques we'll need to finish the book on our own.

Here's a picture of a couple of the pages from Donna's book (which she very kindly allowed us to photograph), which I loved. It is so colourful! Looking at my pages this morning in the light of day, they seem rather pale in comparison, I think I'm going to have to go back and boost the colour a little bit.

Here's a picture of Donna and me after class, both wearing our funky glasses.

The most important thing I learned? That caran d'ache watercolour crayons are worth paying the exact money for. I was in Curry's art store earlier this week and decided to get 24 crayons of a less expensive brand for the same price as I would have paid for only of 10 caran d'ache ones. However, I got a chance to sample both types last night as Diane sat beside me with the good ones and was kind enough to let me try them. The two brands really don't compare, the caran d'ache crayons have just that much more pigment in them, it is astounding the difference it makes to your finished piece. Oh well, I'll know better next time!