Tutorial – Creating Art Journal Backgrounds

In my art journaling courses, people frequently seem to be at a loss in creating a background to write on.  Sometimes I actually create a painting, drawing or collage on a journal page, but most often I create a background to write on.

I don’t have something in mind when I begin, but rather, the joy of art journaling for me is to see where the process leads me.  I usually just pick a paint color, start applying it to the page and the process just happens organically from there.  So, this week I thought I’d just take pictures while I created backgrounds so you can watch how I work.

Hopefully this will help you see that there isn’t a “formula” or a right or wrong way to do it.  It’s just a matter of playing with your supplies and doing whatever suits your fancy.

Bubble Wrap and Plastic

I didn’t think to start taking pictures until I was this far into the process.  I use a book with text for my journal, so I just sloppily painted some purple paint on the page.  I don’t try to hide the text because I like the way it looks peeking through.  Next I applied pink paint to bubble wrap -the big fat kind- and lightly pressed it onto the page.

In the upper left corner of the page, you can see a darker purple design.  That is from a fun foam stamp I made.  The lighter pink designs are made with a small piece of plastic needlepoint canvas.

I added a wash of gesso (watered down gesso) over the whole page because I didn’t like how different the various values of color looked.  Then I restamped the bubble wrap with purple paint.

Watercolor Crayons

I started this page by coloring the whole page with watercolor crayons in a gold color.

I smoothed out the color of the crayon marks by rubbing the page with a baby wipe.

I then added a darker gold for some accent and interest.

Again, I smoothed out the crayon with a baby wipe.

With the watercolor crayons, I made boxes with three different colors.  They are not neat and geometric.  I just stuck them wherever I wanted.

I smoothed out the boxes with a baby wipe.  When you’re smoothing out a whole page, you can just smear it all around. But when it’s a confined space like this you have to be careful not to spread the color beyond the bounds of its design.

I cut a heart out of the page of a dictionary and glued it to the page.  I then outlined it, roughly, with a watercolor crayon.

As I often do, I covered the whole page with a gesso wash.  It would have been fine to leave it like it was.  But I just like a more subdued color, and it’s difficult to find pens that will write over the waxy crayons.