Backgrounds - gazillions of them

I've spent a good part of the entire morning making background papers. These will be used in the coming weeks as part of the Behind the Art Class, and the Jane Davenport classes.

                                                             (this one is my favourite)

These two are created with thick gesso either just slapped on willy nilly, or slapped on and pressed into with stamps on mixed media paper. Once the gesso was dry, I rubbed on some watercolour crayons, and then brushed over them with a very wet brush.

These are again, mixed media paper with a few drops of soft body watercolour paint, then all smudged and spread with a very wet brush. I then used a paper towel to quickly dab and smudge to remove the brush marks, and create the marbled look.

These were made the exact same way as the watercolour ones above, but I used a soft body acrylic paint instead. It's impossible to see the difference in the photos above, but on 4 of the backgrounds I used golden paints, and the purple and orange were made with Liquitex basic paint. The golden paint is a far better quality paint (but expensive), and you can really tell the difference in the finish. The cheaper paints are flatter and more matte looking. The golden paints seem to have a lot more depth. I'm going to have to add more colours of golden to my wish lists - which is expanding exponentially by the minute. ;-)