Beautiful Oops!

I was sitting at my desk, twisting this splotchy piece of paper around in my hands and I kept seeing the same little huddle of a big snail and ladybugs in the ink splotches. I decided to roll with it and make a little garden. The black ink turned into a snail's shell, a little family of lady bugs, and a butterfly. I wanted to create a cute happy garden of flowers and insects and a picnic. I wanted something that reminded people of summer and warmth because that's my favorite season.

I was given a couple of black ink splotches to work with. I used a thin black pen for tracing, colored pencils for the little bugs and the picnic cloth. The main material I used was chalk pastels because I wanted to experiment with it and I knew it could cover a lot of space in little time. I used a white gel pen to make highlights and I think this was one of my favorite parts to do.

I started by creating the bugs out of the splatters that were already there. I used a thin black pen to make all the shapes first and experimented with the colored chalk to find the right shades for the leaves and grass and flowers. My favorite part was making the picnic blanket and coloring it in. I liked making a garden because it always felt like I could add more and more details like little ants or more ladybugs. In the future I think I'd want to do more colored shading and brighter colors.