The second prompt for the year long Art Days challenge is blue velvet night.

Last week I started out in the safety of my watercolor comfort zone so this week I’ve made it a point to stretch out a little. I included two things that scare me a little bit: Acrylic paint and non-abstractions, here in the form of sketching. (I honestly don’t mean to make it sound so fancy – it really isn’t – I just can’t figure out how to explain what I did in other words.)

For me nighttime and darkness fills me with ambivalence. There’s something so truly enveloping and serene about the darkness of night. But it’s also lonely and I personally don’t get outside as much so it has a great physical impact as well. I feel unhealthy. Too still.

Too much mind, not enough body.

In this piece I focused on the feeling of driving in a car at night alone or with my husband. It happens quite rarely and there’s something very cozy about it but also weirdly unpleasant. I don’t believe in ghosts but when I’m driving around the unlit roads of the countryside I half expect spirits of the night to jump out in front of my car. I’m sleepy but alert. I’m appreciating my time alone but I can’t wait to get home.

The base of the page is acrylic paints in black, lavender and fuchsia-purple – all affordable paints from Schjerning and Søstrene Grene. I scraped them around on the page with an old business card of mine and let it sit for a few days while I figured out what I wanted to do with it.

I added a bunch of watercolor for depth. And because watercolors, right? I drew lines of black POSCA pen and a permanent marker overtop. The doodles are made with the permanent pen too.

These are some of the tools and materials I used: Winsor & Newton watercolor set. Glossy accents glue. Black POSCA pen. Gold POSCA pen. Faber-Castell PITT artist pen in 1.5 black (loooove this one). Edding 400 permanent marker. Staedtler ball 432 in light blue. Random old magazine for clippings and tracing over. Not pictured is the acrylic paint and the vellum used for the sketch overlay.

If you want to grow your artistry in 2018 be sure to join the Art Days 2018 challenge. You can start whenever. No better time than now.

xo Nina