Journal Spill with Watercolor Pencils and Pitt Pens

Sometimes the blank journal page is hard to confront. That's why I sometimes start my pages with a word spill. It puts me in touch with my head and heart. Word spilling is something writers use to get started. Whatever is in your head comes out of your pen (or watercolor pencil in this case). 

There is a wonderful book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I read it years ago and went through most of the exercises. I was suffering from artistic block after art school. Yup. Here is a video that wasn't included in the earlier post on the Faber Castell blog. 

For this page, I wrote with a rainbow of Art GRIP Aquarelle Watercolor Pencils. I often turn my journal upside down. Arrange your watercolor pencils in rainbow order and got that pencil moving as quickly as possible so that your brain doesn't have time to edit. Forget about spelling and punctuation and write real sloppy. 

I worked through the rainbow of pencils for these two pages. I only completed one of the pages though. After writing, use a wet paintbrush to blend out the color. Some of the lines may still be visible but that's OK. There is nobody that will work that hard to read upside down, sloppy, watery words. Your writing may have informed you but now it's just a background pattern.

Don't forget to turn your book right side up before proceeding! 

I began to add more color to the page by just scribbling around with another watercolor pencil. It's best to use analogous colors (colors that are next to each other on the color wheel) when your colors are still wet so that you don't get mud. For instance, don't go over a wet green or blue area with orange!


You can dip your watercolor pencil into water or wet an area on the page to make a juicy line  or area, such as the rectangular box above. I still wasn't sure where I was going with this page. I let one idea lead to another. Working in a flow is something that you may need to practice. 


Flowers hold a great deal of meaning for me and these are easy to re-create. They are asterisks with more lines through them. Since the light blue background was dry, I used red to start drawing the flowers and then added yellow. The wet watercolor pencil sat right on top of the dry blue without creating a mud puddle.

I added some silve pen for the stamen center of the flower. I added more detail to my rectangle with a Medium size black Pitt pen.

The last detail I added was stamping. I used a Stampers Big Brush marker to color the stamp and add a bit of pattern to the background.

After you've colored your stamp, be sure to "huff" on it with warm breath to moisten before you stamp. When you've finished stamping, wipe off your stamps with a wet rag just as you would for any ink. Don't worry if your stamps are stained. That means they are well loved. 

Pull out that journal and scribble away!

NOTE: I used a 140# watercolor paper journal for this page. 

This post was originally posted on the Faber-Castell Design Memory Craft blog.

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Comments

[Sharon Field]

Diana,
Once again you took something that seems to be very easy and made it look fantastic!
I really like the idea of starting the page with the scribble writing, especially done with watercolor pencils. Can't wait to see what you do on the other page!

[Diana Trout]

Thanks Sharon. I learned about spilling from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. I’ve really embraced it over the years :)