Stay at Home CJ - Shakespeare

I've just realised that the 5th month deadline of the Stay at Home CJ is looming and I haven't shared last months yet. Whoops!

The CollaborArt "Stay At Home CJ" is a project where all the participants made just one background and come up with a theme for that background. We then sent our background to our host, Sarah. She photocopied them and then we all got a full set of backgrounds (and our originals) back to work on. We all work on the same background each month - to the theme set by the backgrounds creator.

January was Virginia's gorgeous background. Her theme? Shakespeare! Oh Virginia - how you like to challenge me.

Virginia's background
I haven't actually read any Shakespeare. I've been a little scared I wouldn't understand it to be honest. I've seen a couple of films which I did enjoy...

So trotting along to Google I went and searched Shakespeare quotes. I knew I wanted to do a skull but not go down the obvious "Yorrick" path. I like the "Double, Double" quote - didn't realise it was Shakespeare though. Colour me chuffed!
On further googling since, I don't think the quote is quite right. Sssshh. I still like it! I'm sure Shakespeare won't mind.
I cut and collaged the skull from an old book page. He's highlighted with oil pastels and Posca pen. The text is Posca pen, written three times because I remember somewhere that being a magic number and the skull and words together make me think of a spell book. It's much more readable in real life - it was a devil of a job getting this to scan.

I have to thank my 6 year old helper who insisted I add eeeeeevil red eyes. I think it finishes him off perfectly and makes me think of Bob in The Dresden Files. (A ghost who is trapped in a skull.)

So, after initially struggling with the Shakespeare theme, I've come away wanting to actually read some... or at the very least watch more films to ease me in gently. So thank you Virginia for that and for the gorgeous background to work on. If you'd like to see what everyone else did with the theme, click here.

The theme this month is "Innocence and Experience." Crikey!

Thank you as always for stopping by :)