Fox in the Ferns

It seems time to make a few journals, so here's the first one I'm working on.  What I really like about making them is how freeing it is.  It's painting, but not painting anything formal, like a picture.  It's painting a useful object, and it seems that all the rules that usually pertain to something so "serious" as painting on canvas are gone.  It's a chance to be decorative and imaginative and just have fun with it.

So I started as I usually do, with rag rolling the dark green background.  (By the way, the fox is on a separate, small piece of canvas that I glued on later.)  Then I started on the ferns.  I painted the upper ones first, then moved downwards, and as I did so, I used progressively lighter greens.  The most fun were the two unfurled ones.  For a final touch, I added a few dark green swirls and dots here and there, though you really can't see them in this photo.

Then it was on to the fox.  For a bit of color variety, I added small amounts of turquoise around his head, then blended to light green.  I think I got his nose a little long, but he looks pretty good all in all.  I used matte medium as the "glue" to attach him to the background piece, then finished it with three coats of satin varnish.  The other side is just the plain, rag-rolled green texture, but also finished with three coats of varnish.