Announcing the inaugural posting for my new weekly posting of

What if . . . Wednesday!

Every wednesday I will ask What if . . . and attempt something I have never tried before. It may be a new medium, new subject, new technique, or a combination of newness.

I am going to experiment and post my results here, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So here it goes – What if I drew on drafting vellum? 

I happen to have a leftover package from a college drafting class that is not quite vintage, but closer than I want to admit.

(c) 2014 Amanda Balough

I wanted to see if regular pencils would blend and highlight nicely on it. They do. I drew some random swirls and tubes and loved how the graphite moves easily and smoothly, and how I can use an eraser to create clean highlights. Satisfied with that, I wanted to try something else because that behaved exactly as I anticipated. I may try a soft pencil drawing on this one day.

Next I wanted to see how line art would look on here, and started a henna tattoo inspired flower design. You can see it on the right with the blue pencil. This is my daughter holding the vellum up by the window so you can see how thin and translucent it is. Then I wanted to go further and play with henna art designs, so I grabbed a permanent marker. My pen and ink supplies are hiding in the basement somewhere, so I opted for the marker just to get an idea of how a design might look on here. Notice how crisp it is, no bleeding edges on those lines! I thought it might be interesting to show my doodles and tests to show my thought process.

(c) 2014 Amanda Balough

Next I got out a fresh sheet of vellum and started a bold henna floral design with the marker only. I wanted something with plenty of detail and motion. Here’s what I ended up with, but I would love to see more of the white space filled in. As interesting as this is, it lacks composition and does not tell a story. This will get filed in my portfolio as a reference, but I have no more need to explore or finish this piece. It did help me plan a piece in my mind about henna designs that will have some soul, hopefully. Something with more Indonesian charm and a mystical feeling, hopefully. Can’t wait to see if I can do it, but I do have to wait. It will have to get in line – I need to finish my butterfly, and I have another piece in the ready to start phase, and I made a promise not to keep abandoning art this year)

(c) 2014 Amanda Balough

All in all I am very pleased with my first What if . . . and I hope you join me next Wed to see what happens.