Marker Watercolor Painting

Today I’ll show you how I use Crayola markers to watercolor paint in my notebooks and Bullet Journal. I like to use watercolor in my bullet journal, but don’t want the overly wrinkled pages, and the bleed through that sometimes happens with watercolor simply because it’s not watercolor paper.

Why Markers?

When I use markers with a water pen, I get the variety of vibrant colors, and it paints somewhat like watercolor, and as long as I don’t use too much water, it very rarely bleeds through. You don’t need as much water when painting with markers, which is nice. One thing to note, the colors don’t blend as well because I use very little water in the first place. It’s rare to have puddles of water like sometimes happens with traditional watercolor, so it dries much faster as well.

What you Need to Start

Watercolor Marker Painting is one of my favorite techniques, and I don’t need a lot of high-quality equipment. Marker watercolor painting is my favorite go-to method in my planner.

What I use to marker watercolor paint:

Markers: I bought the 100 pack of Crayola Markers for about $15 at Target because I wanted all the colors. You can use other types of markers too. I plan on using my Tombow Dual Brush Tip markers when I get more colors.
Next, I use a simple water pen – you can also use regular brushes and dip in water, but I tend to get too much liquid that way.
I always have a paper towel handy for changes between colors.
As a palette for my ‘paints,’ I recruited a simple kitchen plate. You could use a Ziploc bag or laminated paper, someplace where you can scribble the markers then dip the water pen into the colors and paint.

How To Do It:

Once you’ve chosen your colors and scribbled them on your palette (see below for recommendations & what I use), squish your water pen slightly to get the water flowing but not dripping. Then run the brush through the marker scribbles to pick up the color. Brush lightly on your paper. Don’t use too much water and work fast because it will dry quickly! It’s oh so satisfying!

Watch the video below for the techniques I use. I use this method in almost every video on my YouTube Channel where I paint in my bullet journal. Early on, I used watercolor paints and was very disappointed that the paint rubbed off or sometimes flaked off and I couldn’t write over the paint.

Other Benefits

The other thing that I like about painting with markers is that I can erase the pencil marks left under the color when it dries. And I can write over it with any pen. So you can watercolor the background and still use that part of the page.

Supplies:

Markers:

Crayola Markers – inexpensive and comes in several different sizes. I prefer the super tip markers, not the broad tip markers because they don’t take up as much room. When I letter with Super Tips, I get a better result for my style. Though, I have seen beautiful lettering with the broad tip markers. Super Tips come in 10, 20, 50, 80, 100 count varieties (plus lots of other choices). They are not numbered and don’t have a color reference other than on the back of the box, so if you want to know what color you’re getting, you might have to make up a system to keep track of the colors.

Tombow Dual Tip Brush Markers – Find them individually at Michaels, and I think Hobby Lobby. You can buy small packs or a large variety pack.

Water Brush Pens:

I haven’t found a brand that I like more than others. Having a variety of brush widths is my only requirement – but here are some I’ve purchased and use on a regular basis. Sometimes I mix and match brands.

Miscellaneous:

I use this Marker Watercolor Painting technique in every journal. So far, I’ve used it in Leuchtturm1917, Scribbles that Matter, Lemome, and my own journals created on 32 lb HP paper. As long as I don’t use too much water, I’m happy with the result.

Paper towels are a must! I keep a roll near my desk. It’s essential to clean out your water pens when switching colors. Water pens make it easy to clean. Squish the handle a little, so water comes through the brush fibers and clean it off with the paper towel. Another reason I love this technique!

Something to scribble on: I use a plate. Really, a Correll kitchen plate that lives in my desk drawer. Whatever you use, make sure it is a smooth, non-porous surface to where to scribble the markers. A Ziploc bag or laminated piece of paper would do the trick too — really low tech, here.

Other Marker Watercolor Posts:

My favorite welcome page to date: June 2018 – Beach Scene | Watch the YouTube Video

August Plan With Me | Watch the YouTube Playlist – every day I paint something in my planner with markers using a barnyard/animal theme as my inspiration.

I hope my little adventure in Watercolor Painting with Markers has inspired you to try new techniques in your journal or in your creative time. Experiment and see what you like best.

Happy New Year! Why Use a Future Log – even if you’re late starting

I recorded many videos the middle of December – and didn’t have them all ready to go – some until this morning. I wanted to do it, but there was just something keeping me from completing it. Not sure if it was that little voice of doubt in the back of my head, if I didn’t have the right kind of music playing in the background, or if I simply wanted to watch some more of those good ‘ole classic Christmas movies. I want to represent to you that planning can take place anytime, even if you miss a big date like January 1.

Do you ever feel that way? I have seen so many people say the same thing for planning. Here’s your question – why use a future log if it’s starting later than the ideal date?

Want to see an overview for my month? Read the post here & watch the pre-planning video.

Future Planning Can Take Place at Any Time – Even if You Missed A Big Date

Planning can take place at any time. Even if you missed January 1 or the start of a month. I want you to rest assured that just because you missed the first day to ‘go live’ with your plans, it doesn’t mean that you have to scrap the idea. Pick up where you are and move forward. I am here to tell you that it is perfectly ok. Our lives are not perfect nor are our plans. Real life gets in the way of a perfectly planned one. But don’t let that stand in your way, make plans anyway, no matter when you start.

Bullet Journaling Taught me it was Okay to Move Forward

Believe it or not, And what’s more, taught me to accept it. I used to worry about making a mistake and wanting to rip out pages from the bound book. (Though I never would rip out a page because it would compromise the integrity of the stitching in the book and further ruin it.) Planning petrified me because I wanted the start date to be perfect, my writing to be immaculate, and everything laid out ‘just so’. On my first bullet journal, I messed up on the first line of text. I learned to accept whiteout and move on.

I’ve been really mulling that concept over – and even more so when a perfect stranger reached out to me for advice on how to start. I gave my advice and then I started thinking about the advice I would give myself. I think I will be developing a series dedicated to such thinking. You’ll notice in my video below that I mess up on the lines starting with October.

Bullet Journal Future Log - Why use a log if you are late starting

Here’s My Advice for Starting:

When starting a journal, don’t worry about all the things. 1) Start with A future log, 2) a monthly calendar and try out a 3) weekly log to start. I don’t plan enough to do a daily log, so I don’t. That’s it. Start with just those three. Then you’ll find that you want to include other ideas in your journal. Those become collections.

Here’s my advice when you start late on planning:

Plan anyway. It will be ok. If it makes you feel better, do a future log starting from January (no matter where you are in the year) and work forward. That’s what I did in my first bullet journal. I started in April and it felt weird to start my future log in April, so I included January-March for good measure and wrote down big events that happened in those months as a review then I started my first monthly with April.

Once you turn the page, it’s not going to matter. And the last piece of advice: it will be an evolution. Your style will evolve. You will become more comfortable with what you like and don’t like, so I would say skip the frills for the first bit and just focus on including the things you want to include on your spreads (trackers, all the days on one page, a place for meal planning, etc.)

Why Use a Future Log – Even If You Are Moving to a New Journal Soon

I’d like to present my Future Log – I decided to include a future log in this planner even though I would be in this book for just a couple more months. For one thing, I reaaaaally wanted to include a bullet train in my bullet journal since my monthly theme was transportation based. For another thing, I thought I might be more free-minded with my future planning if I knew I would move to a new journal. I would write things I actually wanted to do instead of just the things that I had to do. In this case, I will appoint wishes versus musts.

So here are some reasons why you should use a Future Log even if it’s in the middle of a journal or in the middle of the year:

Plan the future – yes, please! Plan the future in front of you and not the past behind. You want to start something because you want to just do it already, but you are letting your past hold you back. So what if you didn’t start on an ideal day? Make today be that ideal day.
Don’t miss big dates – who wants that?
Dream Big – writing something down makes it more real in your mind, chances are if it is on the calendar, you might work a little harder to achieve it. Even if you migrate it, that dream just became a goal.
Add your goals so you are working on an actual timeline instead of a mystical date in your head.

4 Reasons to Future Log even if you start planning late in your Bullet Journal

For the Set-Up: Watercolor – with Markers?

Trying out some new techniques for watercoloring this month – with Crayola Super Tip Markers. It’s a really fun technique and I think this would work for most other markers too – like the Tombow dual brush tip markers.The super tips are really inexpensive and now are more versatile in my life. There are specific marker palettes that you can use, but a simple dinner plate works well for me. I’ve also thought that a piece of transparency film would work well too if you didn’t have a smooth finish plate you could claim from your kitchen.

Watch the video below for how I set up my future log. I’d love to know what your future planner looks like. I’m going to brainstorm some ideas and showcase a few of my favorites in a post to come.