"..Gazing where the lilies blow..."

It's no secret that my fav poem is "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, not only because of the Arthurian romance, but for the utter smorgasbord of imagery he produced. Every line is a painting waiting to happen.

Combining this with my new found love of journaling, I have decided to make a page from each verse(as in I wrote the whole poem out 1 verse to 1 page). Instead of collage, I am drawing the landscape as described in the verse. This will form the base layer...
" On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And through the field the road run by

To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow

Round an island there below,

The island of Shalott"
I put lot's of detail into this base layer(this is part of the second verse), even though most will(like the words) be obscured by later layers.
The next layer is soluble wax crayon, followed by a thin layer of white gesso.
For the main image I am selecting one aspect of the verse. This image gave me the pose I wanted...
...sketched the features...
added depth with water colour paint and inktense pencil...
layers of guache paint, and over stamped with black Stazon ink...
gold sakura gel pen and red stickles. Page one " Gazing where the lilies blow"

Enjoy :D XXX