Fanciful landscape

This art journal spread was all about experimentation and play. I bought some watercolour absorbent ground (a Goldens product) a while ago and decided it was time to try it out in my journal. It goes on white - obviously I had cleaned off some pink from my previous page on this!

Then it was time to add watercolours - I really like that I tried flicking the wet brush to make lovely watery splatter effects. If you click on the photo to see it larger you can see it's not really a true watercolour effect, but it does mean I can mix my media so that's an advantage when I'm wanting a softer background on old book paper.

It seemed obvious that this should be an underwater scene and after looking at a lovely mermaid book from the library for inspiration, I found my mermaids...

I sketched them in with stabilo all pencil = a word of CAUTION : If you've used the absorbant ground, this seems to hold onto the stabilo and I lost the ability to erase with a wet wipe so easily....added some pink acrylic so I can fix her face shape

White pen seemed the best to add next along with a sea horse

My go-to technique next - adding stencils. Iridescent paint seemed the logical choice for mermaid sparkles and magical sea plants

Almost there

Found words required

A little more watercolour wash to make the sea more blue and I'm happy to call it done. 

Pure play and not my usual, so a fun addition to my art journal. You might remember I began the year in this recycled book  

and I'm really happy seeing the transformation

This spread takes me to exactly half way through my journal - 21 spreads so far. 

See all the art in here in my Flickr album or through my blog posts HERE.