Creating Wood

My husband is into woodworking and he often shows me stuff that inspires me too. Like this box. After seeing it I wanted to work with papers like they were wood. Carve with my pen and all!

Here's my own little piece of wood, only on paper!

First, I only had an idea of how wood is constructed as a material. It's lots of layers. I made the bottom layer with inks and chose deep orange shades. Then I took one of my illustrations, converted it black and white with computer and printed it to a transparent film. It was pretty full of everything - as my work usually is - even in black and white, but of course it was not quite enough. I added some more doodling over it with a black marker. It already began to look like wood when setting the transparency over the orange background.

I was not finished though. The two layers were then scanned and manipulated digitally to make the black look like it's gone deeper into the orange layer. The result was printed on paper. I added "the carving" using white pen. Then back to the computer! I cut the piece in Photoshop and added the original scan as a background. Some fine tuning and there it was!

An american artist Georgia O'Keeffe said: "To create one's own world, in any of the arts, takes courage." I do not know about courage but it surely is the best art can give to me: to create my own world!