Altered Silver

When I got my first set of watercolor crayons (Lyra Aquacolor), I decorated quite a few spreads in the F&Ws as I experimented with the possibilities of the medium.

This one shows how delicate the colors can be. Just scribble on a bit of crayon, then brush out the pigment with water. I repeated the steps in various places to build up the color a little stronger.

 
For this spread, I scribbled on crayon and spread the pigment out with a wet brush. Then I scribbled on some more crayon and instead of using a brush, I grabbed a spray-bottle of water. The spread was sprayed a little here, a little there, a little more over there...until I noticed there was too much water dripping into the gutter of the book! I stuck the fold of a paper towel into the gutter to soak up the water there, then sat the book vertically to drain and dry. The result: very cool! It still kind of looks wet, long after it has dried. because of the smears and streaks of the paint. I was glad I'd used cool hues for this one.

Here's another spread that turned out rather nicely:

 
Upon the prepared gesso base, I just scribbled some colors down with the crayons. I had no particular design in mind, and I only chose these hues because I hadn't used them yet in my prior experiments. Then I went over the pages with a wet brush, releasing the magical watercolor aspects of the crayons. Definitely cool indeed!

But this became even cooler yet. Instead of stopping when the spread was dry, I added more of the same colors with the crayons, just as I'd done the first time. Then the wet brush was applied again. Then I kinda did it again, and again. The additional pigment moved differently the second, third and fourth times around, thicker and more palpable. I repeated the steps a few more times. The blending of the hues was simply delightful, and the colors began to glow with intensity.

I don't know if anything more will come of these spreads as I now consider the F&Ws to have been an excellent springboard for me, but with no particular need to "complete" them any further. They still hold some great treasures, and there are some interesting stories from their pages yet to come.




Keywords: art,altered book,watercolor crayon