Easy Art Journaling with 3 Adaptable Art Supplies

Adaptable art supplies are The Holy Grail of easy art journaling. In this post I will show you how I’ve used 3 products that can be applied in different ways or with other art supplies to create different ‘looks’. The idea behind this page is to use techniques that are really easy to learn. This way you can start out with a few supplies and techniques and expand if and when you are ready. There should be no barriers to art journaling as it is such a beneficial and enjoyable activity.

An Easy Art Journaling Page

I think the quote for this page is also appropriate for easy art journaling – if you make a mistake on the page, make it part of the page like the trailing bits of red dress in my page. You can use any image to create an art journal page – as long as you are not going to sell the page you make e.g. on cards or other products.

Using Neocolour crayons you can easily transfer any image to your page, even making adjustments as you go to make it more your own. Here’s a nice video showing how to use Neocolour crayons. Just cover the back of the paper/print out/photo with crayon and then place it right side up where you want the image to be and simply draw firmly, with a pen or pencil, around the parts you want to transfer. Very much like a carbon copy but the benefit is you can choose the colour of your outlines to either match or contrast with your image and/or you can blend the outlines out with water afterwards.

With this easy technique, having transferred your image, it is just a case of colouring in your design with markers. There is such an array of markers on the the market including water based, alcohol based and acrylic markers. I have used water based markers, Tombows, which can easily be blended with water if you want to mix colours on the page or fade out an area of colour. It’s worth mentioning the water based and alcohol based markers wont blend together.

Having done the colour blocking with markers I then added textural marks with coloured pencils. Coloured pencils are a very adaptable art supplies in their own right.

Watercolour and coloured pencil orchid — Coloured pencils used realistically

Used on their own they can create amazing, realistic art or combined with other media, like here, they can add accents of colour. There are two main types of coloured pencil: wax based and oil based. I have used Prismacolours, one of my favourite art supplies, here which are wax based. It’s important not to press too hard with these as you might get a wax bloom which is a bit like what you get from polishing shoes, stopping any further colour being laid down. Pressing hard with coloured pencils can also damage the surface of the paper, smoothing it out and this also stops further colour being added as it has nowhere to go on the smooth surface.