In the Morning

Today I'm going to talk a little about what I did to create this page.  For more information about what this page means to me, you can check out this post.  

This time I wanted to experiment with mediums that might work WITHOUT first preparing the page with gesso.  This is what I did:

• Stamp the Bird (HOT Small Stamp) - using black StazOn ink (I've read that archival ink works better for avoiding bleed-through on a thin Bible page than pigment inks - not sure if I find this to be true, but it certainly is better for use with watercolors.  It seems to work okay with my Zig Markers too.)
• Color the bird with Zig Scroll & Brush markers (ones I'd read about that don't bleed through).  I found if I brushed lightly I was able to get a somewhat shaded look on the underside of the bluebird.  I was also able to get a bit of shading in the blue by adding just a little of the dark ink and then coloring the rest with a lighter pen.  It's important here to work quickly and lightly so there is less ink to run a chance of soaking through the page.  Too much coloring in the same spot WILL bleed through paper that is even thicker than this (I experimented on scratch paper before using them in my Bible).  It can also work to put just a hint of darker on the lighter using a marker-to-marker technique (as you color it will start to lose the darker color), but this works best for a larger area.
• Do the lettering - using my Zig Scroll & brush markers, I wrote out the first few words to the song & the verse it references.
• Shade the page in the background - I first cut a mask for the bird (should have for the sun as well) and then lightly added distress ink (Broken China) using a blending tool (first stamp excess on piece of paper and then add in circular motion).
• Stamp Musical Notes - I stamped these using Black VersaFine pigment ink to see if it made a difference.  I can't see any bleed through on the back of the page - looks similar to the bird from the back.  The images weren't as clear as I would have liked - perhaps because of stamping over the distress ink (usually I get very clear images with this ink).  To clean it up a bit I went over it with a Zig Millennium pen.  
• Highlight the verse with my Zig marker - brush side.

I was REALLY happy with the way this page looked - nice and flat with no wrinkling or puckering.  While it really didn't bleed to the back, however, you can certainly see the images because the paper is so thin:

To compare, I took a picture of the back of a page I had done earlier that HAD been prepped with gesso before stamping and coloring.   While you still see the "ghosting" of the image on the back side, I don't think it is nearly as visible.  So o o o, it looks like I can either prep the page and have it lay fairly flat but not perfectly so (gesso prepped page), OR I can go without, using different media, and have a bit more of the ghosting.  I'm really not sure which I prefer, so it will probably just depend on my mood.