Pages for K's journal

I must admit it was intimidating being the first entrant into this beautiful art journal Kelli made...but I am pleased with what I learned! I decided to play around with manipulating watercolors (In this case I used both Twinkling H20s and Winsor &Newtons) for interesting backgrounds. In some ways this almost felt like bullying, since I think of watercolors as so pure and innocent, mere water and pigment, that pushing them around with solvents and chemicals seemed harrasing. But the end result were very gratifying. On each page I tagged the samples I inserted with a/b/c stickers which coordinate with a list on the back of the tag on page two telling what techniques and materials were used. For example A, on page one(second from top)I painted a coffee filter with purple and blue wcs, then painted the leaves and flower with bleach gel. The end result looked surprisingly like a batik. The striated (D) background below it has a wood grain quality, when in fact it was a wash of blue, followed by some stripes of rubber cement, followed by a wash of purple. After dry, I rubbed the rubber cement away to reveal the blue underneath. The splotchy (B) and (F) are wet watercolors dripped with rubbing alcohol. And the butterfly (E) is brown paper stamped with a rs dipped in bleach gel.

On page 2, (top picture) the greenish envie that holds the tag and bits of collagable scraps it painted with the H20s again, and once dry, stamped with bleach gel. The surface of the tag itself was treated with the rubbing alcohol drops, then once dry, was squiggled on with rubber cement follwed by a darker wash and subsequent removel of the rubber cement. Multiple abuses of the innocent watercolors, but wild results. I really enjoyed this whole series of experiments!