The Documented Life Project Week 4 challenge was to write a secret message and then to paint over all but one key word.

Jan: The first thing that came to my mind was a very simple art technique we did as kids where we drew a picture with white crayon on white paper. Then we painted over the paper, and because the crayon resisted the paint, whatever was drawn with the crayon showed up through the paint. So I took a white crayon and wrote my secret message on white paper. It’s not easy to write words when you can’t see what you are writing! I painted over my secret message with watercolor paints. To highlight a key word (since ALL of my words showed up when painted over) I doodled some clouds over the word “love”.

Melinda: Since I have been traveling, I don’t have all of my art resources available to me. All I have with me is paper, pens, and pencils. I did purchase some colored pencils to give me more color options. I couldn’t paint over my secret message, so I wrote my message in pencil then colored over it with colored pencil. I decided that I couldn’t just stick with one key word and chose a key word from each verse that I wrote down. Then on top of the message I wrote the words that I felt like were the purpose behind these verses. I’ve been trying to do more doodling, so I doodled and colored around each of the words.

The only instructions for the challenge for Week 5 was to add a doodle border. As with all of the challenges, how that was to be interpreted was up to the artist.

Jan: I cut a piece from a gelli print I made last week with the letter “J” and glued it to the size paper I am using for the challenges. 

I started doodling a border on the right side of the paper and then couldn’t stop!

Melinda: While staying with My Hubby’s grandparents, I was eating cereal one morning and saw this flower on the bowl. I liked it and thought it would be great for my doodling and drawing inspiration.

I started off doodling the vine border. I thought of the flower from the bowl, so I added that to my doodling. Because of my doodle, I wanted to add a quote about flowers. I googled fonts and found one I liked in Google Images and drew the letters as best I could. I liked the way it looked with just the doodle colored, but I have been trying to incorporate more color into my artwork so I am making myself practice adding color.