Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists

I purchased Carla Sonheim's drawing book, because I'm always interested in looking at new drawing books or new mixed media art books and this is a combination of both.  She has a lot of drawing exercises on her blog also.  As an art teacher who avidly researches all sorts of art lesson plans, I have seen some of these drawing exercises before, but Carla puts her own unique spin on everything.  I really like how the book is laid out, with plenty of beautiful examples.  This will be a nice addition to my classroom library.  Some other things I like about her techniques are how she blocks in her images with gesso, and then adds watercolor or charcoal or other paints on top.  That was my hesitation with drawing directly on collaged imagery and getting the colors to show through.  Duh!  Gesso!  I should have thought of that. :)  I use gesso already in my paintings/collages so I'm surprised I didn't think to block in my drawings with it.  I actually didn't think that watercolor would work nicely on top of gesso, but it's not too bad!  I like Carla's whimsical creature drawings--- they are delightful.  One of the exercises has to do with making creatures.  Here are two of my creatures.