Art Journal Every Day: Liquid Watercolors
June 22, 2012
If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, all the posts can be found here. Please read this post first. There is a flickr group for sharing right here. Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day! No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week and you've blogged about it, or put it on flickr, please leave a link in the linky list at the end of this post. Thanks!
Today we have a guest post from Jami Oscherwitz all about liquid watercolors:
I wanted to start out by thanking Julie for this amazing opportunity to post as a guest blogger! I have been in the arts my entire life and there was a time when I put my need to create on the back burner. My kids were babies and I just didn’t think about it. Five years ago, I somehow discovered art journaling online and realized that I had been doing this in some form since I was in middle school. I would collage using pictures and magazine images and I would doodle and write in my journals. I knew I had to give myself permission to create again. I needed it!
I recently discovered liquid watercolors and fell in love! I have had fun playing with regular watercolors and getting some cool effects...
...but I really wanted colors that were intense.
While wandering the aisles at Dick Blick, I came across the little bottles of Dr. PhMartin watercolors.
I loved the little dropper. The glass bottle. The intensity of the liquid.
I dropped a little bit on my watercolor paper. I added water and smooshed it around the page. Yes, I smooshed! Then I sprayed it with water and titled my journal to get it to really move. Then I let it dry. I loved the effect! I LOVED the color. It sat for a few days and I decided to tangle it.
I had so much fun!
I couldn’t wait to see what else these little beauties could do. Would they work over Gesso? How well would they mix? Would alcohol drops work on them too? Could I use stamps with them?
Here is what I found out:
They work over Gesso but take longer to dry and the color intensity is tempered.
They mix with each other while wet and look amazing! They blend nicely and look awesome when they run into each other. You can get some really cool effects! I blended the turquoise and yellow together. Then I sprayed water at the top of my page, touched the area with the droppers and sprayed again to get the colors to run!
Stamping worked too! First I stamped with white paint and then painted turquoise watercolor on the stamp. After it dried a little, I sprayed the stamped image because I didn’t want such exact edges on the image.
Alcohol drops work, but in a more subtle way.
As the liquid watercolors are really wet, the alcohol drops kind of disappear. If you let the liquid watercolors sit a little and dry or dab off some extra liquid, you will see the alcohol drops. Not as intense, but a great effect!
A little goes a long way. You can get different results depending on how you apply these babies. If you wet your paper first, add a drop and then help it move. You’ll get some beautiful, feathery shading.
If you wet your paper first, add a drop and then spray with a water bottle you get something else.
Dabbing the liquid watercolors with and without added water creates an entirely different look. You can get a combination of feathering, blending and shading!
It seems the possibilities are endless. I am having fun creating some awesome journal pages.
Next up, canvas!
Here's the linky list for this week:
Jami Oscherwitz is a self taught artist. She has always created and has been art journaling for the last three years. Before she had children, Jami was an elementary school teacher and she had her own jewelry design business. She sold privately, in various galleries and participated in the Chicago art fair circuit. Currently, she loves making her own art journals, teaching others about art journaling, learning new art forms and calling herself an artist!
Find Jami online: jamiosh.blogspot.com
----
P.S. Interweave is currently offering a bundle of all three of my hour-long instructional DVDs for just $23.94! That's a savings of more than $35!!