Water colour and gesso!

I started preparing some background pages in an old geography book I am altering.  A layer of gesso, but leaving some words, and the line drawing still visable.    I love adding watercolours over gesso - it is easy to make run, and create interesting textures.  I also used some neocolour water soluble crayons.  Over gesso these just melt when you add water with a wet paintbrush, and become  just like watercolours in that you can blend and bleed the colours together right on the page.  A lot of fun, and a very quick and easy to get some watery colour onto your background.  I like to leave the words and print showing through - being just obscured enough to not be too dominant, and also being selective as to how much shows through.  I also like adding lots of texture with the gessoed background by using an old scruffy brush, and going in lots of different directions to create that textured brush stroke in the gesso.    Great fun for art journals and altered book journals!

All ready now to add the next layer, doodle, drawing, collage or journalling :-)

watercolour art journal pages

Watercolour in my small art journal has been a favourite medium this past week to use.  I have a small travel set that is easy to use, and I doodle with colour while watching TV with the family.  Words, no words, with marker, watercolour pencils - just exploring and having fun!

Sketching over watercolour wash background

 

watercolour and pencil

 I have been creating in various ways - here's a journal page I did as a free form sketch with colour and pencils. 

Go with the flow...

 
Journal page - Go with the Flow - A play moment today resulted in this Art Journal page.  Watercolour, acrylic, gesso, collage, neo colour water crayons - lots of drippy fun! 



I generally start art journal pages with no intention of content.  But just start playing with line or colour; adding details as they come to mind.  I made the circles using a spagetti measurer - it is a handy thing to have on my art desk in my 'tools' pencil pot.  But for all that unintentional play - the end result and the words are just so true of where I am at; going with the flow is really the only way I can keep on top of things when life is just super busy!  It is certainly less stressful than worrying about anything!
I love this about Art Journalling.  You can be as creative as you like.  Intentional or not. Colourful or not. Lots of writing or none. Faces or stick figures. Deep and meaningful or just for fun.  Regardless of whatever you put of yourself into a journal you get back something back - even if it is just a few minutes spent doodling to de-stress and Play.
What I used: Mont Marte 150gsm journal (very cheap), and the paper is great for dry media like pencils.  If you want to add wet like watercolour or watercolour pencils you will need to gesso first ( as I did here) and then it is fine.  Watercolours, collage elements: sewing pattern tissue paper, black pen, silver gel pen, neocolour II crayon, gesso, tapestry  canvas, a small brayer, cheap acrylic paint, alphabet stamp and archival black ink.

Playing

After four solid days of admin, creating, printing, typing, packaging etc of my art and prints for the new store display... I took time last night to create this page.

I started with 2 scrappy bits of old pattern paper, and a half painted page as I was going over the top of an experiment of materials page.   Then without any planning I more or less did the following:
put down a splodge of black gesso, becuase it is more fluid than I am used to I had extra, so I scumbled it over the rest of the spread; watercolour pencils ( Inktense), and crayons (Neocolour II), chalk pen, and ink with stamps.  The lacey pattern was created using the saved backing paper from some black lacey paper tape I used in the packaging of my prints, and a black ink stamp.  I like the effect it created, and I always use  both sides!  The bold stamps to create HARD - I used the reverse side as well - one side with the silver letters, then overstamped using the squared outline side in black.


Playing Hard?  To me, at the moment - giving it my all, not worrying about the mess, finding the joy each moment, validating the creativity in many different areas of my life!
How about you?

Gum leaves

I love picking up dropped gum leaves.  Not only are they quintessentially Australian, in both look, feel, sound effect (when you walk on them and they 'crunch'), and the smell of the eucalyptus - they also make such interesting subjects to draw or to study.    This is the 2nd page of my mixed media journal.  After a background of acrylic was laid down, I added the elaves over the top using water colour pencil.  I actually cheated here a little and traced three different leaves, sometimes reversing the leaves to get a different perspective.   Then using the pencile I shaded, and I was particularly trying to continue the transparency effect of the different layers showing through.  It is square, and it is hard to fit all the image into a picture format.  The support is re-cycled heavy duty brown wrapping paper.