Sketching and Collaging onto a Background

I mentioned a while ago that last spring I took a fantastic course in creating backgrounds for art journals taught by Roz Stendahl.

Here's one example of the kind of work I did with her class.

I had done this sketch from an old mugshot I found online (old mugshots are terrific to sketch from!).

We had begun creating backgrounds in the class and had hit the point where we were adding some stuff to them, collaging, drawing, journaling, and really experimenting to get a feel for what could be done.

Anyhow, here is what I came up with.  This isn't a miracle of design of anything:  it was my first shot at working this way!  And I'd never used some of these tools before (I can't even remember what-all I used, other than it involved paint pens).  But it was terrific fun to play with and to discover the depth that you can get in a page starting with interesting layered backgrounds like this.

See that little piece of washi tape on the right?  Not real washi, it turns out, but plastic stuff.  Cool looking, but doesn't take ink or paint very well.

Anyhow, this is sort of a "kitchen sink" spread--what will this do? was my mantra as I played.

I learned a lot!