Author Archives: leslie

Vacation Planning

Some of you may know that for years I worked a retail gig, and even when I had worked my way up into the admin office and eventually the regional office, I still worked the holidays. Expectation in retail is that all hands are on deck.

Part of my reason for going to grad school was to not have to work the holidays. I missed seeing my family on the important days. Also, nothing will make you hate the holidays like working retail and dealing with how awful some people are.

I’m taking the whole week around Turkey Day off. Why? Because I can. I’m also taking about a week and a half off around Christmas and New Year’s. Why? Again, because I can.

Turkey day is the last time we visit my family until warmer weather.

Every time we visit I overpack art supplies and think I’m going to make all sorts of art and spend a lot of time journaling. Instead, I watch movies, YouTube, and generally relax.

I’m about to go through this process again.

I have decided to take with me:

My current ETEWJ
My small square journal
A pocket notebook with ideas for videos and zines
Waterbrushes- assorted
Mungyo Watercolor Crayons reviewed here
Handful of Paint Pens and Markers
The Caliarts watercolor set I reviewed here
Various Pens

My laptop
My new drawing tablet
Camera and mic set up, though not sure which and I won’t likely record any art making. Also a tripod and a neck/chest mount just in case I go somewhere and I do want to draw.

Because I know that I won’t make that much physical art what I am hoping to do is to get some time in on the drawing tablet and get more comfortable on it. I’m feeling more confident but still awkward.

I also hope to get more of the journaling zine ready to go. I’ve got a lot of typing to do on it before I can do the hand drawing I want to do. I’ve wanted to scan and reprint some of the Useful Journaling and make them into a download and printable.

As for Christmas, I really want and need to get some real stuff done around the house, plus really dive deep into the zines I’ve had churning in my brain for the last few years.

I’ve been really enjoying my morning spreads and pages that I’ve been doing and I’ve got to scan a bunch more of them. It’s been quite cathartic to think about art in the face of difficult times.

During Tangerine Mussolini’s first term I spent a lot of time making zines, but also I spent a lot of time in those first COVID lockdown months feeling very flat and strange. Looking back much of that time was very surreal and I realized how much I prefer being able to GO SOMEWHERE on the regular. Even if that is work. I turned half my yard into a garden, which I have not continued to maintain… We’ll see about this spring.

Anyway, I have memories that seem very surreal, but this go round I want to make sure I’m making more art and connecting locally and further out.

Anyway, I’m going to go make art. I hope you do too.

The Video Making Process and Upload

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My video making process is pretty straight forward, and there are 2 styles when it comes to my art videos- talk while I art and voice over. I prefer the talk while I art despite it being a little more garbled and often make a little less sense. The voice over is a lot more work.

The videos are both shot in the same way. I have an overhead rig that I created out of mini lightweight light stands for creators or influencers (ugh). I then have a pole that goes across and over my art making area that is made up of a leg from an old broken tripod. I have a lot of lights mounted because the office where i work is so dark. This is the one downside of this house- the light in the rooms where i have had my workspaces has terrible light. It’s always been this way. I miss our old apartment and its’ amazing light filled rooms.

The camera lives on a mount above the space. It is always ready to go. I make sure that the batteries in the mic and the camera are always charged and that there is a card in the cam.

I make it so I have no excuses to not turn on the camera when I sit down to make art. I don’t record everything, but I am now recording A LOT.

I do have to remind myself to turn the mic on. It is the one thing I really do struggle with.

It doesn’t take long to fill up a terabyte drive when you shoot high quality video.

Basically I record in the morning before work, or occasionally after work. On Saturdays I transfer a week’s worth of video to my laptop and also move already completed videos to an external hard drive. Currently I’m saving the videos I used to make the videos but I think I’m going to only keep the finished videos, though part of me wonders if that is a mistake. Especially considering how cheap SSD and SD cards are.

Once the files are on my laptop I open up CapCut. Yes, I taught myself Davinci Resolve and used Adobe Rush and use a cheap online editor. Why? I can auto make YouTube thumbnails with it and once i figured out how to edit the audio it works fine.*

It’s robust enough to do what i need since I shoot everything consecutively or in chunks that make sense.

Anyway, I pull the video into CapCut and process the audio first. I level the audio- push a button that brings the lows up and squashes down the peaks where I speak too loudly. Then I push another button that separates the speaking from the background noise. This is helpful when I have a lot of trucks tearing up the road in front of my house. It does leave a bit of a hollow artifact that I think I could fix in Davinci or Rush. sadly my new laptop can’t run Rush.

I then go through my video and remove the spots where I use a heat gun, fart or make other unpleasant noises.

I decide if there are areas where I want to speed up the video. I have found that most people want to watch the video at close to or at real time speed. I have decided that the most I’ll speed up my video is 2x for instructional videos and if I’m doing a voiceover of an art making, then I’ll use whatever speed make sense for the video.

If there are areas where I don’t talk, I add in cuts, full silence then and add music over those areas.

I then add in titles, text and end credits.

After all that I click another button and create the YouTube thumbnail. This involves finding a still in the video and adding text to it. this is where i think about the title to the video and the almighty algorithm and how search might find my video. I try to make something catchy but I fail at things people click on.

I am currently testing out “Getting Loose in Your Sketchbook” and “Fill Your Sketchbook” which seem to be the god awful click bait titles that are working. UGH I hate it.

This has been a bit of extra work as I play around with a glitch effect on the title. It’s fun but I think makes the title hard to read. I’ll probably quit using it for some of the stuff CapCut suggests in a colorway I like.
After all this I do a final check to make sure the title in the video and episode number is correct.

The episode number is really only there so I know what order I intend them for upload. I have and frequently upload them in a different order if the chosen order makes them fall on the wrong day of the week.

For instance, I don’t schedule review videos for Saturdays, those are for Tuesdays or Thursdays. I try to load a longer art making video on Saturdays because they seem to do better on those days. as for reviews, it doesn’t matter what day i load those, they always seem to get the same number of views no matter than day I post them.
Anyway, i’m writing this to avoid watching the election results roll in and it’s worked kind of.

* Though there are times when there is an echo that comes from the noise cancellation on the mic. It only happens when there is a lot of really loud ambient sound- like the construction happening on my street. Those are times when I record a voice over because the audio is trash.

When Other Artists Inspire

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I’ve been watching Drewscape_Art on youtube for a few years. I started watching him because he was making some sweet pens by hand. He doesn’t do that anymore but his illustration career took off. His art style is really cool and deceptively simple. Think Ivan Brunetti or my hero, Linda Barry. He also does great things with color. He combines his hand drawn art with interesting effects in Procreate. When I watch his videoes where he uses Procreate I have some serious iPad FOMO. Which frankly, is saying something since I’m an Android and Windoze person 100%, but a small part of me wants to use Procreate.

Anyway, Andrew posts a lot of videos about creativity and making comix. I think a lot of what he posts directly relates to art journaling. One of his recent videos was about a warm up exercise where you draw random comix panels on a page and then fill it with random blobs and scribbles of midtone ink wash. You then use these shapes to pull images out of. You look and decide what you see, then add in more lines and details until you have a page. you can add words if you’d like. In this particular video he cuts words out of a piece of junk mail. Nifty.

I have to admit I’ve been hooked on this since I watched the video. I had to immediately try this out for myself and oh man has it been bringing me some creative joy. It’s a lot of fun.

First the random panels are pretty random and then you fill them with loose watery ink or watercolor or other media. It’s very freeing to do. Then you let your mind be child-like and creative and play as you see things in the shapes. Then you add in details and maybe more color.

as you can see from the two images above, the materials you use really has an impact on the looseness of the page. IN this case I used paint sticks and they have a rough quality. they are hard to control and eliminate the possibility of details. When using them you have to wait to add in the detail. It’s an exercise in patience.

This page was made with my 2 ink wash brushes. One has a light mid tone and the other a much darker mid-tone. I brushed on the light mid-tone and then dabbed in the darker mid-tone. No plan, just sticking to streaks and circles.

This ended up being a page I photocopied and shared withthe kids I worked with. I had them use it for the basis of their own spread. Asking them to look to see what they saw in the blobs and streaks. they then used sharpies to create their images. I’ve done this exercise with a couple of different groups of kids and the results are wild and different every time. And it’s the same for me. See my 2 sessions with photo copies of this page.

Two very different pages that began the same. Nifty.

This page started out with panels and ink wash flicked across a wet page. Each panel was wet with a brush then ink flicked across the page to create the loose cloud like areas. I then blobbed on some pink watercolor and let that flow as well. as I brought out the details I wanted to add in the idea of people being sucked into the mouth, so I stared by drawing stick figures then realized I could just do dots. So I flicked more ink wash across the page. While the paper is dry the ink wash doesn’t spread out, it stays in a loose dot.

I have recorded a lot of this process in a few videos that will come out across the month of November. I haven’t captured all of them but I’ve been making more and more of these pages.

They bring me so much joy but each page tells a story of my life in that day, just like any other art journal page.

I’ve scanned and cleaned up an image of the page that I have used with my groups of kids, if you want to try this in your own art journal feel free to download the PDF and print it to make your own Drewscape_art comix inspired page.

Get a downloadable version suitable for printing here: https://ko-fi.com/s/8389c4d952

Available as a high quality PNG and PDF.

7AM Construction

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My street is currently being torn up so that gas lines can be replaced. The guys arrive at 7 AM. hey start moving stuff around the street at 7:15 AM. Digging, jack hammering, and large vehicles start up at 8am.

Work goes until 4pm.

I often start recording an art video at 8am.

Thank goodness for noise cancellation on my mic and my camera.

Yet there are days when they don’t dig, grind, or jack hammer at all.

Occasionally they need access to my basement to check on the gas meter.

Change is disruptive.

Any change is disruptive.

Not all change is good.
Not all disruption is good.

But it can be good.

Disruption and change can lead to growth.

When I think of things that have led to the biggest moments of growth within my art it’s always occurred with change and disruption that has been incredibly uncomfortable. I’ve learned that the more uncomfortable the disruption and change has been has directly correlated with how massive the growth has been.

I’m currently relearning an old skill and it’s involving being organized again. I’ve had to put together a calendar, take photos of specific things, and create a plan for something that may not happen. I’m learning to allow myself some breathing room if it doesn’t happen.

And that is scary.

But knowing that on the other side of all this work (change and growth are WORK) I’ll have skills I take with me everywhere I go is a big part of what drives me forward.

Always Someone There to Remind Me

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When I was a pre-teen my Dad bought a beat up Ford Ranger. It had a tape deck that the previous owner claimed had a tape stuck in it. That tape was a copy of Naked Eyes Burning Bridges. I managed to get it out of the tape deck and then proceeded to listen to it on repeat.

Pre-teen me loved Brit synth pop. I think I wore that tape out.

Also I wanted that truck.

The title I used for this post is a riff on one of the songs on that tape- the actual song was “Always Some THING There to Remind Me” and apparently it has been recorded by quite a few artists.

Anyway, after that intro…

I was reminded today of how there is always someone there to remind me about what they think about me, my art, and how they think I should also feel about all that. And generally they don’t rate me or my opinions very highly. There is always some fool out there ready to tear me down.

And frankly it’s really hard to weather that storm.

Their garbage opinion always seems to rain down when I’m at my my fragile. When the scaffolding of my self esteem is constructed but don’t have the support braces installed yet.

These people, they are jealous of success. When they sniff out success they want to take a dump on it. When they see my joy they want to dump on it. This pic has a fun little glitch in it. The wheels do not look like that IRL! I wish I knew how to make it happen again!

These are the worst kinds of people. They just dump on everything and everything. They don’t really care who they dump on, they simply want to tear down people in a misguided attempt to build themselves up.

I use a generic THEY here because we all have a dumper in our lives. I’ve referred to these people as Dream Dumpers before. These are the people when you tell them about your favorite new cheese/ TV show/ art material/ movie/ hobby/ etc… they just dump on it.

Their capacity for finding the worst in everything is mirrored by how awful they feel about pretty much everything- they hate their boss and their job, as well as just about everything else in the world. But mostly they hate themselves.

I write this not to find empathy, though I do have empathy for people who hate everything. I write this because it helps me to think about the hate that these folx spew outward, they also spew it inward.

Imagine how horrible I/you feel about what these folx say to you either in person or in a social media comment. Then imagine them saying it back to themselves over and over and over again.

How awful.

Garbage in. Garbage out.

It gives me some perspective. But also it helps me to see that the Dream Dumper, their perspective is skewed. They can’t see the joy because all they have is hate. They dump on good happy things out of jealousy, even if they don'[t know they feel jealous, how can they actually know how they feel when everything is shrouded in hate?

Dream dumpers suck the joy out of pretty much everything.

Re-post from my Ko-Fi page, get my posts much earlier there.

Inspiration Arrives in MANY Forms

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every now and then I discover something ridiculous that grabs ahold of my brain and won’t let go. I’ve tried, but Chicken San still holds a piece of my brain. Part of what makes Chicken San great is that he takes familiar tunes and matches the singing up with a rubber chicken. I don’t care who you are, but rubber chickens are always funny. If you don’t at least crack a smile at a rubber chicken, red flag.

The latest and possibly the greatest thing too grab my brain is Wheelie Yellow. What a terrific spoof on #vanlife ever. The dry British humor gets me and I found myself not only chuckling but burning through my whole lunch break watching all of the Wheelie Yellow videos.

Yes, Wheelie Yellow is a stuffed yellow thing with an animated mouth, that “drives” around an RC #vanlife van while narrating the videos with a dry humor that not all will find funny.
The absolute commitment to the bit is astounding. The videos are shot with many many perspectives. Meaning the person making the videos has to stop and reset the cameras and take another shot. From a filmmaking perspective, this is insane, and dedication. In a single sequence there may be an interior shot of the van, a front view, a side view, a distance shot, and several others. It’s ridiculously complicated and it works so very well. Then there’s the perspective of the Vlog angle of the stuffie.

Like, WHAT!?!?! Banana!

Anyway, enjoy Wheelie Yellow:

I might’ve decided to support Wheelie Yellow through purchasing a t-shirt… As a belated birthday gift to myself. Totally worth it.

Re-post from my Ko-Fi page, get my posts much earlier there.

Gear or Supply Guys

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A type of dream dumper that I especially loathe is the Gear Guy. (It goes without saying that the Gear Guy is a gendered joke and the GUY can of course be a GAL or just person.)

The Gear Guy is that person who asks you what you are using and then smirks and tells you they have the newest model of your beaten up used piece of equipment.

It’s a wallet wag.

I see this so often when it comes to cameras, watercolor brushes, and bicycles.

I use my action camera for everything. Because it eliminates shake it’s great for taking pictures. I can also adjust the settings and get a nice shot. I have added a step up ring to it it so that I can use close up lenses and filters! Cool. Nifty hack!

Most of all, I know how to use the action cam, and I have it with me all the time.

I also always have a toy camera in my bag. I won’t write here about my undying love of toy cameras, but I looooove them.

Anyway, I was out with some people I know and I pulled my old trusty modified Osmo Action 3 out, slapped on a 2x close up filter and took some pictures. A Gear Guy came over and asked me about the cam. I explained the ring and filter situation. He smirked and held up his Canon with a $1600 lens.

Me being me, I lifted up my camera and snapped his picture. I laughed as I walked away.

His attempt to make me feel small didn’t work because I disarmed it with humor.

But it still grinds my gears.

Having the money to buy a thousand dollar camera body and slapping a $1600 lens on it doesn’t make him the better photographer. (I am a shitty photographer and I know it.) It means he has more money and more tools to prop him up.

Expensive tools aren’t a magic wand to make better art.

Cheaper tools used well can make great art. Yes cheap tools can be frustrating to make with, but if you are careful and buy well, you can find good cheap tools. Even if you aren’t, I’d rather see someone find an amazing cheap tool and brag about their deal than listen to some Gear Guy brag about his $150 water color brush he flew to Japan to buy.

This is why I suggest cheap journals/sketchbooks. Fill them up, burn through them with all the messes and then buy another one. Feel no guilt for using cheap sketchbooks as your journals.

An expensive journal won’t make your art journal better. Only time and effort will pay off. Spend time to find your favorite art journal. Most of the time the journal expense will be somewhere in the middle of the cost range.

Re-post from my Ko-Fi page, get my posts much earlier there.

What Do I NEED to Create?

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Back in the day I used to soak up videos and blog posts about art making gear. Everyone’s equipment fascinated me. Part of this was curiosity about processes but also wanting to know HOW to use that equipment.

And when I write equipment I mean everything from paint to brushes to paper to cameras and software used to edit the very video I watched.Yes, I picked up an eScooter. Yes it’s probably too dangerous. But holy hell is it FUN!

I have a theory that most of us who get caught up in GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) are like me- just want to know all the things about the things we use to create. I want to know your processes so I can develop my processes.

As I work on my latest videos and possible zines, I have been asking myself how do I create and write a tutorial that doesn’t feed into the GAS making machine?

I have been asking myself the question: “What do I need to create?”

I ask this as I reach for materials.

I have access to every material I could possibly want and then some. If I don’t have it in my home studio I have it at work. If I don’t currently own it or have access to it I can order it and have it here in a few days.

GAS and SABLE (Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy) are two reasons I started to tell myself and say in my videos and posts, “Use what you have.” “Buy singles when possible.”

But really when you dial it down to basics what do we need to create? I think this is going to vary for everyone.

I need a sketchbook of some sort and either a pencil or a pen.

That’s it.

It’s simple.

I also think I make some of my best art when I strip it down to simplicity, and allow myself to fully embrace that material. Then when I open up and add in color and wash and more, it feels decadent and alive.

Every art piece is a way to learn more about myself and my interaction with the world around me. Even when it’s “just” in my journal, it is important.

Anyway, the scripts (we can loosely call what I’m writing scripts) for my tutorials encourage people to strip back their practice to the most simple they feel comfortable. Pen. pencil. Simple. Add color to the mix later. Explore black and white then add color.

Simple.

The difficult thing is that simple is never easy.

Re-post from my Ko-Fi page, get my posts much earlier there.

Blog Updates

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I just spent some time performing a lot of behind the scenes updates to the blog. a lot of things were broken and frankly I did not have time this spring or summer to do these updates.* I decided to buckle down and do those updates today. So apologies for the many posts in one day.

You will see cross posts from my Ko-fi account happening here. Posts occur on my ko-fi page first and then a week or so later are posted here. There are supporter only posts. Depending on the nature of those posts, they may or may not be cross posted. I like to make sure that the people who support me get a lot of benefit for doing so.

I am working REALLY hard to remonetize my youtube channel. So please click any links to YouTube and watch some videos, even if all you are doing is letting it play in the background as you work.

Also, I use Amazon affiliate links in these posts and on Amazon. If you are thinking of doing ANY shopping on Amazon, click one of my Amazon links even if you aren’t going to buy that particular item. I’ll get some small portion of your purchase if you do that. ** he affiliate program really helps to keep this blog and my YT channel going. I don’t make a lot from it (usually around $25-50 a month.) But it is enough for me to pay for the occasional art supplies and for all the hosting fees I use to keep this blog up.

I’ll make sure to announce my YouTube videos here the best I can, but if you are interested in art making and art journaling head over to my channel and his subscribe. I post videos about art journaling, making art and some reviews of budget conscious art journaling products.

*i.e. I did not find the time to do the updates, I am working on work-life-and own work balance, my health has become a priority for the last few years which means I have to lean my balance to life.

**Do this for any of your favorite creators, it helps us immensely.

Figuring Out This Balance Thing

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It’s been a hot minute between posts here. It seems i Have trouble balancing my life.

Every summer it is the same thing, it gets warm and I have fewer work days with kids and time off, so I ride my bike. Which, excuse the drama, has saved my life in the same way journaling has in the past.

I know I’ve written a bit here about my health struggles with Type 2 Diabetes, but riding my bike has allowed me to get down to one med for my blood pressure and one med for the diabetes. Wild. My blood sugars are generally pretty even and my blood pressure has been good enough that my doctor said I don’t need to come in and see her until next year, unless I have an emergency.

All summer long all I really wanted to do was ride my bike. I had a great time doing it. I’ll hit 1100 miles ridden this week. 1000 of those miles on a modified Walmart bike. The rest were on a vintage Kona mountain bike.

Anyway, if you want to hear and see more about my health journey you can check out my health and wellness channel, Less is More Healthy on youtube.

I was recently able to pick up the Osmo Action 5 action camera. This is great for the health channel and the art channel. First off, when I’m recording me drawing with a POV camera, the Action 5 is better than the old Action 3. But this also means that I can put the Action 3 into my overhead camera mount and leave it there.

This means a lot of things. First off It eliminates a lot of set up and take down that has stopped me from recording my art making in the past. Even though I set up a nearly permanent mount on the overhead rig where I can just clip the Action 3 in and out of. No one said that decision paralysis makes any sense. Now the 3 will just live on the mount most of the time, ready for me to hit record. This also means that I can record audio AS I WORK. My old Cannon doesn’t have an audio in port and the mics on the budget cams is trash.

While I love a voice over, sometimes it’s more intuitive to record as I work.

This also means that if I can get my shit together I can do some livestreams. I used to LOVE doing livestreams. Except for the trolls, but hopefully I’ve got those dudes all blocked.

I did some drawing this summer but not a lot. I drew some boats when I rode out to Manchester-by-the-Sea * and I drew trash while I waited for the train.

People aren’t impressed with my drawing trash. Which has brought up a lot of thoughts around the purpose of an art journal/visual journal and deciding NOT to draw pretty things. I may have to do another series where I draw used tea bags again.**

At work I fired up our Vandercook press and it was everything I’ve been missing in art making. So I’ve decided that all my groups will be making posters and using the press this year at some point. I can’t wait. This also means I get to use the press more. I REALLY can’t wait.

I’m also going to do a section on keeping a visual art journal.

Which brings me to my hopes for this Ko-Fi page and Comfortable Shoes Studio the YT Channel and blog. I’ve been working on a couple of classes which will include some hand drawn printables, possibly bundled into a zine, and a video series to support it. I’ve been writing my ass off and gathering ideas for this project. Yesterday I made myself a template to create the blank pages with non-photo blue pencil and I’m deciding how I want them to look.

I’m blocking up a little bit, because I want them to look like my work notebook/sketchbook pages and my Every Thing Every Where journal pages. I’m totally over thinking it.

My goal for this week is to loosen up and commit to making one of the pages of the handouts and zine.

*MbtS is almost as bougie as it sounds. It’s not as bougie as Magnolia, which has a corporation dedicated to keeping it’s private beaches private and keeping out of towners off the beach.

**Tea bags are a useful drawing model. First off if you make tea you will have them. Secondly you can easily pose them and they stay in place. Finally The forms involved are great- loads of shapes and lines to play with drawing. Yeah I just talked myself into it. I’m going to draw some trash.

Re-post from my Ko-Fi page, get my posts much earlier there.