Puzzle Piece Art Two Ways

I've always loved jigsaw puzzles, but until recently I had no idea that competitive speed puzzling was a thing. Like many other puzzle fans, I learned about speed puzzling through the fabulous Karen Puzzles. I recently watched the live broadcast of the World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships in Spain, sponsored by Ravensburger (my fave!). I would have loved to have been there in person. As a spectator, that is. I'm not a particularly fast puzzler. On the other hand, I've never timed myself or even tried to puzzle quickly. Maybe I'm a fast puzzler and I just don't know it! (I'm not.)

While watching Worlds, I played with puzzle pieces in my sketchbook and ended up with this spread.

I started with the page on the right (because I'm left-handed). I used puzzle pieces from this fiasco, a single sponge, and Folk Art paint in red, blue, and yellow (affiliate links here and below). I laid out some puzzle pieces on the paper, dipped my sponge in yellow, and pounced over some of the pieces. I repeated the process with red on the other side of the sponge, and blue in the middle. 

My hope is that I would end up with some green and some purple by just using the one sponge. I did get some green, but no purple. When the paint was dry, I outlined the puzzle pieces with a black Apple Barrel paint pen. They aren't perfect, but oh well. 

For the left side, I used red, blue, and yellow paint pens to dot around the now-painted puzzle pieces. 

Once I'd dotted around all of the puzzle pieces, I started extending the dots outward from each. I varied the size of the dots and allowed them to intermingle when two colors met. 

It wasn't until I took this picture that I realized the sun had gone down and I was crafting in the dark. 

I kept adding dots until the page was full. I thought about outlining the puzzle pieces but decided against it. 

The finished spread is not particularly attractive, but that's the beauty of a sketchbook. It's a place to try stuff and experiment. Both pages were fun, but I particularly liked dotting with the Apple Barrel paint pens. I'm really enjoying figuring out different ways to use them.