Art Journaling 106

I’m on a quest to find quick, inexpensive ways to layer art. I’ve always admired those adult journals that just seemed stuffed with creativity. This watercolor page was fun, but I think it would look even better with children’s handwriting on it.

1. I started with warm-colored watercolor paints and filled a journal page, overlapping the swatches until the page was full.
2. I placed some of those little reinforcement circles on the paper, colored over with crayon, and then peeled them off. Note: The circles stuck a little too well and I had to use a pin to pry them off, even after using one several times.
3. My writing inspiration came from the famous opener “Once upon a time”. I’m thinking that you could ask the students to write that across the top of the page. They could imagine the beginning of some story, draw an image to go with it, and write the opening sentences somewhere. If the kids are just asked to begin a story, and not necessarily worry about an ending, they might have more fun with the creative possibilities.

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Art Journaling 105

I love dark journal pages with light or white writing on them. I wish I had lots of colorful poster paint markers, but in lieu of that, I found that India ink and silver Sharpies worked pretty well.

1. I painted a journal page with India ink and let it dry.

2. With a silver Sharpie marker, I drew a lot of parallel lines on the page, each about an inch apart.
3. Writing with only capital letters, I filled in the lines with the date and my favorite thing I did today. Using capital letters will create lots of closed shapes, which is important for the next step.
4. Using some good pencil crayons, color in the closed shapes.
5. Sometimes less is more. If your page looks good with just the writing and coloring, then stop and enjoy.

Publish Post

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Art Journaling 104

I started this page with the idea of repeating circles, and just played around from there. I think it could be a good exercise in harmony as I tried to fill solid circles with colors that appeared in the cut out photos.

1. I used a spice jar lid to trace circles on my paper. I think it looks best when you can have at least 3 going across the page.
2. The same lid was used to trace some circles out of an art magazine I had. I wanted a lot of circles to color in so I cut and pasted only four photos.
3. The remaining circles I colored in with pencil crayon, trying to use only colors I saw in the photos.
4. The background was filled in with a color that was not already used.
5. The edges of the circles were retraced with a black marker, and color names written in the corresponding circles. I think I’d like to try this again with watercolor pencils to see if closer color matches could be made, but I do like the pattern.

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