Icarus Falling- Journal page

This page/ pages started out as a sketch idea for another project. I was just laying down some colour and texture as a background when my Derwent inktense block made a kind of circular shape on the page.

So as the name suggests the page is based on the Greek Myth of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. The pages were gessoed in white quite thickly. While the gesso was still wet I dragged my spreader through it to create grooves and patterns. I let this dry and then started adding paint. I started with a deep yellow which I painted on one page. I closed the journal over then and pushed down to transfer some paint to the other page. This gave a great mottled effect. I dried this off with a heat gun and then applied a lighter yellow to the opposite page and repeated the process. This results in one page being brighter than the other. This is where the happy accident happened. I got out my Inktense blocks to add a little more depth to the background and ended up with a large sun which just didn't want to be contained on one page! Then I thought, 'what does the sun bring to mind'? and I thought "Icarus". Off I went to the trusty internet to find some images of Icarus. I found this great one by Frank Wright, which has a lovely sketchy quality to it. I printed it down and used an image transfer paste to transfer it to the page. I used some more texture paste and stencils to add a little bit more interest and sprayed the lot with Cosmic shimmer mist in Mango Blaze. To finish I added the story of Icarus around the son.

A close-up of the texture

A close-up of Icarus