Fluorescent colours are such fun but the paint normally fades in prolonged exposure to sunlight so an art journal is a great place to play with them as the pages are protected.
Choosing Fluorescent Colours in Paints
You can get fluorescent colours in:
- pigment
- paint – claim to be lightfast too which means they should not fade from exposure to light.
- pen – a whole page of different types of pens.
- screen printing ink
- acrylic ink – I find these to be very thin.
format. I have added some links to the list above to products that you might want to check out. In pigment format they can be added to any binder you choose or resin, soaps, candles. I’ve only tried the pigments with resin and they do work nicely.
Fun with Fluorescent Colours
Turn a UV light on your fluorescent painting to get the real joy of these colours. Here are some paintings I have shone a light on:
Here is a link to a museum of participatory fluorescent art. And here is a link to some very cool fluorescent art. Interesting!
Art Journal Page with Fluorescent Colours
Be the reason someone smiles today
- Pink
- Yellow
- Blue
You might recognise the similarity to a well known colour system? Yep, CMYK – cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Likewise pink, yellow and blue fluorescents provide you with a large gamut of colours through mixing.
I started off with a dark purple background that I was hoping to leave showing through the page (got a bit carried away painting though) in many places. Then I added my design with charcoal which is easily rubbed off if you make mistakes – as I did. Then I filled in the background, adding white to my blue fluorescent acrylic to improve coverage. I mixed fluorescent pink and yellow in different quantities for the girl’s skin and the bird and mixed blue and pink with a touch of black for the dark purple. For the green I mixed fluorescent blue and yellow. The paint brush was held fairly loosely and I made strokes by dabbing with the brush changing the direction of the bristles occasionally. I think I could have been less generous with the paint application but that is one of those things about painting a page fairly quickly. It’s great to reflect after finishing so you can learn things about your own process to refer to in the next painting.
The page isn’t perfect by any means but it is a fun, colourful page and I enjoy the whimsy of it. The question is: “who is making who smile” there? I really encourage you to have fun in your art journal and not worry too much about the outcome.
Here’s the video of me painting the page:
I hope this post sparks some ideas for painting with these joyful colours and you have fun. Go bring a smile to someone’s face …… Hugs, Ceri xx
