The magic of brush pens, a spray bottle and a plastic bag

Art doesn’t always have to be expensive
A few months ago, I discovered a new type of simple and addictive artistic expression. I’ve always loved using brush pens that mix like watercolours, but now I’ve found an interesting technique for creating abstract backgrounds. All you need are some brush pens, a plastic bag, and a spray bottle with water. Oh, and most importantly — LOTS of paper. It vanishes so quickly…

Here’s how it works:

Start by scribbling with your brush pens on the plastic bag. You’ll notice that most pens don’t write well on the shiny surface of the plastic and gets smudged easily — this is exactly what we want to use.

The simplest option is to make some scribbles on the plastic bag and lay paper on top of it to pick the paint. It kind of works, and you’ll collect most of the paint from the surface, but it’s not particularly fancy — maybe the lines would be a bit more textured than if painting straight to the paper, but on the whole, nothing fancy.

The magic comes when you spray some water on the scribbles and watch as the paint starts to leak, move and mix. By varying the amount of water, you can create slight textures or completely smooth backgrounds. The results are absolutely stunning!

Fairly dry — you can see where the water droplets fell on the paint.

Artwork by the author.

This is what happens when you add more water:

Artwork by the author.

I believe I have used the same paper twice, actually. The background is very smooth, but on top of it, there is texture. I probably left the background to dry, and next time I used it to pick some mostly dry paint.

A mix of different textures — the top is very smooth and soft, followed by the spotted red similar to the above picture. Then in the middle, there is almost completely dry paint. I had some dry leftover paint on the plastic bag, so I dragged the paper on the bag to collect what remained. I like the variety of it.

Artwork by the author.

The one below started with a paper that was just supposed to pick any leftovers. It turned out to be one of my favourites.

Artwork by the author.

I’m totally in love with the soft tones this one turned out to have:

Artwork by the author.

Occasionally, the results are not as pleasing. It depends on the amount of water that you spray. In the picture below, the scribbles are somewhat washed out and there’s no texture but you can still see their outlines. I tried fixing it by trying to pick some very dilute paint, but it didn’t really help. I was hoping that the soaked paper will spread the old paint, but it wasn’t enough. In any case, it’s not going to the trash. I’ll just use it again with some darker colours next time.

Artwork by the author.

I’ve been experimenting with this technique for a while now, and I’m absolutely in love with the results. I will share some more creations in another post. And I really need to extend the colour palette that I use! I have brush pens of all colours of the rainbow, yet the theme is always pink/purple/cyan/green with a bit of yellow and red occasionally.

I decided to experiment with felt-tip pens to see if this technique would work with them as well. In fact, I found that the colours of the felt-tip pens can sometimes be even more intense than those of the brush pens. But in either case, the results are amazing. And the technique is really simple.

The photos and the story are (or will be) posted on my other social platforms, too.