Distress products are all designed to mix well with water. One technique with paints and inks is to spread the ink or paint on a craft mat, mist with water and then press your paper into the color. You get a mottled, marbled look. It is always different and fun.
The only challenge when working with an art journal is the middle. All that paint and water can seep down between the pages. I started with pages that were one continuous sheet across the center. It still left me the holes where the paper is bound together and I did get some seepage in those holes. You can avoid all this by covering the center with tape and going over it all with gesso. The trouble is I'm just not that fond of gesso as a background for my pages.
Coating with gesso automatically curls the paper no matter what else you do with it. Spray inks don't adhere to the back of the paper. It does have advantages as paint moves well and can require less paint for coverage. I suppose it is really what look you are trying to achieve.
I've decided that a little bleeding of paint or ink from one page to the next is not going to bother me that much.
For the first page (above), I used some black accents and a stenciled design with a sun theme.
For the 2nd page, I'm welcoming fall. Now when I did this page almost 2 weeks ago, I didn't know that fall would arrive in the form of a monsoon. I think we are at 10 inches of rain the the last few days but nothing compared to some parts of the south. Hopefully all this will go away and we can settle into a nice normal cool fall pattern.
Here is the process video at YouTube. I used music as I didn't think I needed to talk through it all and I had a cold. This is my first effort with music and admit that I didn't try to time the music to the activity.
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Your pages are great, so much colour and I like your pen work.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to add tape to the centre of my pages as I think as it dries and gets brittle it will fall off.
So not in a rush to try it