Those of you following along know that every month in 2020 my 11-year-old son Henri and I will be completing a challenge from Moriah Elizabeth‘s Create This Book (vol 1). It’s getting too long to list each month’s challenge but they’re all linked for you at the bottom of this (and each month’s) post(s). This month he picked the “create an ad” page on page 99 …of which I again forgot to take a blank “before” pic.

It’s been fun figuring out ways to interpret the challenges, but by far my favorite part of each month’s task has been seeing how Henri completes his pages. This month he’d been watching a lot of Captain Sauce’s Slime Rancher playthroughs, and that led to this:

I love it! ❤

He made his ad for one of the pink slimes from Slime Rancher, and all the details just crack me up, from the star callout behind the grinning slime, to the “Pre-order today at slimeplush.com” at the bottom LOL

He even drew a cartoon page on the facing page so it would look like a magazine ad! He picked a few of his favorite asdf gags and drew them out as comic panels.

I, on the other hand, wasn’t as creative. When I knew I had to draw an ad I went for the first thing that came to mind… (sorry Kelis!)

First I did a quick pencil sketch.

Once the sketch was done I erased the whole page to leave only a faint outline, and then went over it with my Derwent Metallic watercolor pencils. I put a sheet of plastic-backed cardstock (saved from a package of bedsheets) under the page to protect the rest of the book from water damage. I could have Gesso’d the page first, to seal it for painting, but tbh I was really busy this month and put the page off until the last minute, so didn’t think of it until it was too late. 😉

The paper really isn’t made for water media, so instead of spreading the paint, it absorbed the water and nothing blended. I ended up having to go in with a 2nd layer on the damp paper, and would have kept going until it looked as intended if the paper hadn’t started to tear. My plan was for a blended watercolor background but obviously that didn’t work out.

Without waiting for the paper to fully dry, I went in with some Micron fineliners and inked in the details.

I used thicker Sharpies for the bold text…(immediately regretting the pink squiggles smh)…

…then finally added outlines again with the Microns.

And here’s the final page. It’s not quite what I had in mind, but that’s the risk you take using permanent media. Oh well. I still plan to use paint and watercolors in this book, but at least now I know that the paper doesn’t like it at all so I can adapt.

Complete list of 2020 Create This Book Challenge pages:

• January – page 163 “Create an Empty Setting“
• February – page 208 “Decorate This Page With Food”
• March – pages 206-207 “Create a Different Drawing”
• April – pages 22-23 “Create Folds”
• May – page 47 “Bumpy Texture”
• June – page 39 “Create Quick Sketches”
• July – page 99 “Create an Advertisment” – this post
• August – page 35 “Create an Unusual Combo”
• September – page 88 “Create a Shared Drawing”
• October – page 175 “Create a Page for Your Favorite Character”
• November – page 185 “Create a Combo”
• December – pages 52-53 “Create with Wax”

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