What Lies Beneath...

I've been tinkering with backgrounds in a special journal for same.  This is what I've done thus far.  The most recent is this first image.  I see improvement already over the first ones.

I'm working to get the knack of what works for me.  The thing I like best for spreading the paint is an old credit card.  The small spot effect is made by spritzing water on a second wet layer of paint, waiting for about 15 seconds and then blotting off the top layer where the water is.

For paint, I prefer "real" acrylic paints over "craft" acrylic paints, although I did buy a few bottles of the cheap stuff recently to Gelli print with.  It's true what they say, all those folks who write about the use of paint in their work ~ the cheap stuff has a really low pigment load, meaning it's mostly binder and doesn't have much coverage.  The binder is also weak and the colors can't be mixed successfully because they're already so highly mixed to begin with.  Of course you can paint over dry layers of the same stuff, but they just don't work like real acrylic paint.

The best use of the craft paint for me IS to use it on my Gelli paint, to get a nice thin layer of paint.  With as little pigment on the plate as this paint leaves, the first print is more ghost-like and you're not offprinting the first layer just to get it off the plate.  I'll likely use up the cheap stuff this way ~ or possibly I'll just donate most of to the local SCRAP.  And go back to using real paint exclusively -- although that doesn't mean it will be Golden Artist Colors (read: expensive).

Besides the 9x12 vertical journal I'm using for backgrounds, I've also started in on a 6x9 horizontal watercolor sketch book, doing the same thing.