I am participating in Michelle Ward’s Street Team Crusade this month. She challenged us to use Gesso in ways you haven’t thought of. I just finished a page tonight and wanted to get it posted. My first impression was “How Cool Is That?” (this is Michelle’s phrase).
This is an 8×10 page from my handmade art journal. The page is Fabriano watercolor paper painted in green acrylic to prepare for future journaling. Well for some odd reason this page kept getting in my way. Perhaps the green was just too bold. As you can see from the outline, I had taped down a beautiful yellow/pinkish pear image that I cut out of a magazine. Well, I decided to Gesso over all of it, magazine image included. I noticed after the second layer of Gesso, the image was beginning to pull up from the background. After the second coat had dried, I began to slowly pull off the image of the pear. What was left was the outline (and some of the sticky tape I used to apply it with). I sanded the image a bit to get the stickiness off and violá, here is my new journal page waiting to be worked. What I learned from this is that anything can be a mask on a page. Take a look through your magazines, cut out an image, tape it down (I used Tombow Mono Adhesive), Gesso over the page and image (once or twice), let it dry and slowly peel the image off.
Is That Cool or What!? Won’t you join me in this adventure? Go to Michelle Wards Street Team page and join in.
Well, back to my art room to play with Gesso! Thanks Michelle for the great challenge.
Keep it simple.
Simply Artistic Pleasures 
I absolutely love happy accidents like this! 🙂
That is fabulous Marci! Thanks for the tips!
I love your pear. Using magazines is a great resource for finding shapes to use as stencils. Thanks for sharing your steps!
I love how this turned out! I forget how wonderful watercolor paper is!!!!!!!!!!
Wow — that pear as a mask is so cool! What a great combination of techniques, it turned out really well. -Kim
Whoa ! What an creative idea ! Love it.
What a great image! I think your experiment looks wonderful. BTW, isn’t it funny how you can prepare a page and then just never be able to do anything with it until you re-prepare it? I have some pages I have prepared and never used…
This is so wonderful! I want to try it on some bachground pages that I have ready, but haven’t done anything with. Gorgeous.
Really nice! Thanks for the instructions too….I have to look for some new images to try!
Marci,
thanks for sharing your adventures with us the other crusaders! I love your page and the energy with which you made it and wrote about it!
Very,very cool! Don’t you just love happy mistakes that take us to new places?!
I love the texture in the pear !
greetings from Belgium
Inge
I LOVE THIS! I can’t wait to try it.
Great idea, thanks!
marci – thanks for jumping in with gesso on your journal page and showing us (and telling us) your process. you GOTTA try painting over that gesso now. TONIGHT brush some paint on the white spritz with water, leave for a few minutes and WIPE. You will love it! If you don’t have a spray bottle you can spit on it. Yes, I said spit. Hey – use what you got 🙂 That IS SO COOL that your original pear fell off. Now this page is all YOU. that rocks!!
Very cool! Proof that there are no “mistakes” in art, only opportunities.
What an awesome idea! Isn’t it great when you find some pearl of art wisdom out of what you once would have thought was a mistake? HA! Great! Now you’ve got my wheels turning on how I can use this technique…Thanks!