Above: journal page spread where rubberstamped text forms the background. Click on the image to view an enlargement, and read below for more details.
I'm still fighting a cold and suffering from Fair Withdrawal. I am aching to sketch something, anything, including two not-too-attractive pears (I like pears with a little more variety and oddness to their shapes) that were on standby for Dick's lunches. So I flipped over the page in my journal and the next spread was covered with pre-stamped text. (The text is actually a line out of an article I read a couple weeks ago. "This insistence on open endings and on feelings." I had stamped it, running right off the edges of the page spread, with a large stamp typeface and Brilliance stamp pad inks, which have a nice metallic quality.)
I picked up a Faber-Castel Pitt Artists Brush pen that is a sort of periwinkle blue and started sketching the two pears I'd put on my desk. I was sitting on my foot-rest close to the floor. (Yes some of the handwritten text at the bottom of the verso page has been obliterated in the scan.)
Then I started scribbling with my Stabilo Tones to add color to the pears, their shadows, and the table top. The thing I love about Stabilo Tones is that you can scribble, then wet the lines and move the paint around, and finally blend with you finger.
If you want to read more about Stabilo Tones go to this post, and then read several of the posts which follow it. I was on a Stabilo Tone kick at the end of the summer. Just like me to love a dead medium. You could have similar fun with Caran d'Ache NeoColor II—which are also wax and watersoluble.
The blending with your finger is the real joy here—especially when you are fighting a cold and dying to sketch something (and there's no puppy in the house).
So next time a cold has you trapped in the house with nothing but produce, cover a journal page spread with text for the background and start to paint over it. Don't worry about the finished product. Just be sure to pick a medium that is tactile and fun, because the process will perk you up, even if the chicken soup isn't working.