Art Journal Page: Loving Word

I started this journal page while I was vacationing in Kern.  Before we left I had bought these cool water-soluable graphite pencils that work like watercolor pencils...you draw/write with them, then you can wet them with a brush to blend and smear them.  I wanted to see how they worked, so I drew a branch of leaves and then used a wet brush to soften the lines and shade the leaves.  I love how it worked!  I should've taken a pict of how it looked because now it's mostly covered up.

A few days ago I decided to work on the page again.  I squeezed a few paint colors (aqua and teal) straight onto the page and smeared them around with a brush.  When it dried I got a few water-soluable crayons out and loosely colored the leaves.  I then used a wet brush to blend and smear the colors together.  


I used the same graphite pencil to write out a great quote that I just found  by Frank Herbert Sweet, "If you have a tender message, Or a loving word to say, Do not wait till you forget it, But whisper it today."  I colored in the block letters the same way as the leaves , then splashed water all over the page to make the pencil and crayons run and drip here and there.  The final touches were a few more doodles, then I ran a very wet brush over the orange crayon to pick up some of the color and flicked it onto the page. 

This evening I was reminded of ONE OF MANY REASONS WHY I NEED TO WORK IN MY ART JOURNAL MORE,  to practice techniques.  I've been a little stuck on a painting I started fairly recently, not sure what to do next.  After finishing this journal page today, I grabbed the unfinished painting and started doodling on it with a water-soluable crayon, and then flicked on the same color and sprayed it with water here and there to make it run and smear, just like in my journal.  I'm not sure if I would've thought to do this on this painting if I hadn't just done it in my journal, so yay for art journaling!  Oh, and a great thing about using these products is, if you mess up or don't like the color, you can just wet it and wipe it off!!  Just remember if you are using these water-soluable products, you need to spray them with a sealer/fixative after so they don't keep running if it gets wet again.  And also remember to have fun and enjoy the process.