Winter Is Coming | Art Journal Page

It’s getting super cold outside and we’ve had several snowfalls this year so far. Between the wintery weather and rewatching Game of Thrones, I’ve had the phrase “winter is coming” stuck in my head for the past few weeks. So, I decided to make this Winter Is Coming Art Journal Page! I went with a pastel theme, but you can always use darker or jewel tones for a really cool effect. Let’s get started.

If you don’t have all the same supplies, don’t worry! You can always substitute different supplies or make adjustments as needed. One of my favorite things about art journaling is working with the supplies you have rather than always buying new ones!

Winter Is Coming | Art Journal Page

Supplies:

Pink, teal, blue, and purple acrylic paint
Modeling paste
Iridescent medium
Gesso
Palette knife
Soft and hard bristled brushes
Letter stickers
Letter stencils
Pencil
Paint palette
Variety of gel pens or felt tip markers in coordinating colors
Note: the pin that’s pictured? You don’t need that. I had an idea and it didn’t work out. That happens A LOT in art

This is a two page spread, and we’re working with lots of paint, so I took some scrap paper and put it under each page to protect the edges of the other pages.

We’re going to start by coating each page with a thin layer of gesso. This helps prep the page for all the paint we’re going to layer on top and makes them more sturdy. The pages will curl up initially, but they’ll flatten out as the gesso dries.

Let the gesso dry completely, or if you’re impatient like me you can use a hair dryer (on low heat only!) to speed up the process.

On your paint palette, put a blob each of purple, pink, and teal paint. Then put a blob that’s half teal and half blue. Then you’re going to put on a blob of modeling paste and a blob of iridescent medium. And yes, blob is in fact a highly technical and professional term. Now you can use your palette knife (or the end of a brush if you don’t have a palette knife) to mix together the blue and teal to make a muted medium blue. Then take a little bit off of the blobs of modeling paste and iridescent medium and mix them into each color to thicken up the paint and make it shimmery.

Now you just take a brush and start painting the colors across the pages at a diagonal, leaving some white space at the outside edges of the pages. Do one color at a time, blending the next color into the previous one.

Your page should look something like this! Let it dry completely.

Now we’re going to take the white paint and a rough bristled brush, and get just a little bit of paint on the brush at a time. Make sure the brush is dry and don’t add any water to the paint. Dab any excess paint off onto your palette. Gently scratch the tip of the brush over the dry colored paint, and it will create what will look like scratches with the white paint. Go over the whole page, and you’ll see how it starts to look like blowing snow! Work the paint around until you’re happy with how it looks, and then let it dry completely.

Now it’s time to grab your pens! I used white, silver, and clear glitter gelly roll pens and pink, teal, and blue Papermate Flair pens. I started drawing very simple snowflakes across the page, starting with big ones and then filling in with small ones. These are super easy to do. Just start by making a cross shape, drawing an X over it, and then adding on the little branches. Let then pens dry, and make sure you’re not smudging anything as you work on different parts of the page.

It’s time to do the lettering! If you’re nervous about doing stencil lettering, feel free to use letter stickers for this whole project. However, I love the versatility that stencils provide. Go ahead and stencil the word winter onto the first page using your pencil. Always use pencil when tracing letter stencils, because pens have a tendency to bleed under stencils. Then start outliving and filling in the words with gel pens.

See the gaps created by the stencil? Sometimes I leave those in depending on the effect I’m going for, but a lot of the time I use my pen to connect the parts of the letter so it isn’t super obvious that you used a stencil. When you’re finished with the word winter, go ahead and add the word “is” beneath it using your letter stickers or even smaller letter stencils.

On the next page stencil the word “coming” the same way we did for the word winter!

Let’s add some snow to this page! Take some white paint and water it down. Set your whole journal inside of a shallow box. I keep an old amazon box in my craft space and repurpose it for this use. Dip a stiff paintbrush into the watery paint and then use your finger or thumb to pull back the bristles and flick the paint onto the page! It speckles the whole layout with white dots and drips that looks just like falling snow!