Monochrome Doodles Christmas Card

For my latest Christmas card, I decided to go in an entirely different direction.  Instead of using brightly coloured inks,  I kept the colour palette monochrome: black, white and pale grey.  I also enjoyed some relaxing doodling.

I worked on a piece of white card measuring 13.8cm x 13.8cm.  I stamped the large Bird Outline stamp from the set by Claritystamp using Onyx Black Versafine ink.

Having masked off the bird with the mask which comes with the stamps,  I added the large Leaf Outline stamp (also Claritystamp) for the bird to stand on, then removed the mask.

Masking off the leaf where needed, I added further leaves around the edge in the same ink.  I also stamped Noel from Mini Word Chains 13 & 14.

Next came a happy accident.  I hated the doodle that I created in the bottom left hand leaf.  Rather than throw my work away, I decided to cut away the leaf.  To balance the background,  I cut away a leaf on the right hand side too.

I divided the bird up into sections ready for doodling using a black Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pen (S).

Apart from the pattern on the wing which is an original Zentangle® pattern called Cadent designed by Maria Thomas (see HERE),  I just played around filling the spaces.

I then added 'snowflakes' in two of the leaves.

And divided the other leaves into smaller ones.  I didn't want the patterns on the leaves to draw the eyes away from the bird too much.

I drew a box around Noel as I was intending to add grey watercolour pencil to the areas of the topper which had not been doodled.

Having gone round the edge of the cut outs in the black pen, I used the grey water colour pencil from my WHSmith set of 24 to colour the background, then blended out the colour with a water brush.

Finally,  I matted the topper onto a piece of black paper (14.2cm x 14.2cm) and added it to a white card blank.

I will use cut outs again in the future to add interest to a topper before matting and layering.  I am really happy that I messed the first doodle section up or I would never have thought of doing this.