Tonight’s art journal session features Brusho colour crystals. Last time I had the Brushos out, some of the highly concentrated watercolour crystals fell into my stack of distress inks. Inappropriate streaks of colour appeared in carefully blended ink for months and months, despite fastidious wiping down of every single ink pad. This time I’m wiser, and the inks have a full cover over them!

I gessoed the page first given that I was going to be flooding the page with water and I didn’t want too much absorption going on. Then it was a matter of adding the Brushos – sometimes I spritzed with water first to catch the crystals as I sprinkled them on, other times I spritzed after and watched the dispersal of the colour. The ink colour rewets with subsequent water application which allows some removal of colour. This is one benefit of using gesso to seal the page first. Here’s a quick video of my process…

Regrets, I have a few

I thought it would be beneficial to have more of an outline to define the tree. I no longer think that! The right-hand tree doesn’t look too bad, but I’m not at all happy with the left outlining. I added a few leaf outlines as well, particularly trying to emphasise individual dots of colour. Again, I don’t think it adds anything to the final image – I preferred the ethereal rawness of the watercolour. I didn’t want the quote to interfere with the image, but by keeping it low, I’ve lost all contrast against the leaf mould backdrop at the foot of the trees. I suspect I could go in and lighten up the background – Brushos will rewet, and Poscas are waterproof. But, typically, I only considered this after sealing the page with spray fixative.

A couple of notes on working with Brushos

They can be used as I have done, in at least two ways – raw crystals spritzed with water, or mixed with water to create a concentrated watercolour paint. Many ‘true’ colours are mixtures of different colour crystals which is where their uniqueness lies. For instance, leaf green looks yellow in the pot. Brush off unused crystals to avoid them dropping off elsewhere. I also chose to seal with a non-waterbased sealant just to make sure nothing was going to move after I had finished. Clear up is simple with water and paper towel, but be prepared to find stray colour crystals showing up for a couple of weeks!