Author Archives: leslie

Drawing from Life Informs the Imagination

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I don’t design my pages. It has never been a thing that I do. I just draw and fit it to the page, occasionally I’ll put some text into a bare area and call it good. In a way the lack of design is design.

As I was working on a video about drawing cartoon faces I stated (paraphrasing here) that when I create a cartoon face I am drawing on all the experience I have drawing faces from photos and life. 

​The kids I work with complain about drawing from life, arguing that they need to work on their manga style rather than drawing stuff from life. They hate to hear that all the greats drew and still draw from life on the regular. Every time we put pen(cil) to paper it changes and alters our ability to render for the better.*

I did a vibey realistic drawing of a face today with pen and ink wash, a favorite technique. Then I went on to draw 7 different version of him with a few different materials. It was and is a great exercise in character design but also in seeing exactly how drawing real but with a focus on vibes and from “life” really informs my cartoon faces. Those characters can feel more REAL because I draw vibey realism.

I tested it with a fude nib, 2 types of gel pen, and a brush pen. Each gives a different feel to the cartoon face. 

As a further test I’m definitely going to test this idea out with the drawing tablet in Krita.

​* We can discuss what I mean by better in a future post.

Protecting my Peace

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I recently got sucked into a clickbait title on YouTube. It was about community, well the title was about community. The actual video was a rebuttal about some toxic video a bully posted about another creator.

Part of me is relieved that this occurs in other online communities and not just the art journaling community. But a larger part of me was sad that jealous toxic behaviors seems to occur in other communities.

In these times community is so important. I learned while managing AJ Ning and therapeutic groups that toxic behavior must be dealt with ASAP for the health and safety of the community.

For me this means carefully curating my online interactions to only dealing with people who are respectful. I don’t mind disagreement or critique so long as it’s respectful. careful curation means that the minute I get a whiff of disrespect I block them. I have learned to value my time and energy and to protect it. a sketchbook page in Krita, yes those are my Comix Me.

I have learned that I no longer need to give disrespectful toxic people my energy. I don’t need to try and correct them or try to teach them to be better. I simply label their behavior and leave the room/online space. A heard learned lesson is to not think about it. To not let the toxic behavior live rent free in my head.

I recently wrote about my experience watching “Join or Die” a film about the need for joining clubs and groups in your community. It made me want to recreate AJ Ning in some form or another. But I know I do not have time nor the energy (right now) to do the work that a community like that needs on a day to day basis. Instead I need to concentrate on getting my channel back up and running. I need to focus on my art making and learning.

For now I’ll link to this great substack from Wendy Mcnaughton about emotional support and filling your cup.

Difficult Times Sometimes Require Doubling Down

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Honestly I had hoped against my better judgement that this election would turn out differently. As soon as the dems announced Kamala I told my wife, “We’re screwed. If Hilary couldn’t get elected why do they think we can get a black woman elected?” But still I hoped that things would be different.

I always assume that people will know and understand that I’m a very liberal person but I’ve learned that things are very very complicated. A friend told me that his mom an immigrant BIPOC lesbian voted for Tangerine Mussolini. Why? She’s a citizen now so she’s safe.

I just can’t.

I’ve been making images as a way to process the weight of my disappointment in America. I’m muting and blocking hate from social media but watching the news to keep up. I feel muted, dull and a whole lot of anger. Anger is like any emotion, it needs to be sat with and processed. I do this best with my art journal and now my written journal. 

As I processed during the creation of my “Sit With your Rage” page I realized I need to double down on my beliefs and also on my art. Art is even more important that ever. I need to push through that dull muted feeling and allow myself to feel my disappointed rage and channel that feeling into art.

Freud* called this sublimation. I hope to sublimate a whole lot of art.

I’ve been thinking and planning a whole lot of stuff behind the scenes. One of these many things is to create more downloadable products that have a pay what you can structure as well as a series of items with a more normal pay structure. I want to make sure that a lot of my art journaling content is accessible to as many people as possible but also somethings just require a whole lot more effort.

With the news that Bezos funneled a whole lot of dollars to the Tangerine Mussolini I’m considering quitting Amazon as a whole despite it being where I make most of my content related revenue. Am I cutting my nose off to spite my face? Is it worse to get an affiliate contract going with AliExpress? Am I just trading a deal with one corrupt greedy billionaire with another? I need to think on it some more.

As for doubling down, I started to make high quality scans of some of my background pages, which I’m then bringing into Krita or Adobe, editing the image to the right size, and then making a high quality PDF good for printing on 8.5×11 inch paper. These have been a lot of fun to create and I’m enjoying the process.

I also started the process of hand lettering and inking an art journaling zine. Hence the learning how to get a good scan.

I have been looking at learning to ink digitally for months. I have been wavering between an iPad and a digital tablet. I was about to ask if I could borrow one from work to make a decision. Then I looked at the cost of an iPad and the fact I’m still playing off my new laptop.

The choice was made- a digital tablet is significantly less and I don’t have to learn a new OS. So I bought a very budget friendly Wacom clone and I’ve been trying to learn how to make it work for inking.

There is a steep learning curve. It feels weird and awkward. Last night as I was about to toss the tablet across the room I realized that learning to use this damn thing is a lot like learning to use any new pen and paper combination, hard. So I did a things I do with all my new tools, I set up some sketching pages and started to ham fist my way through learning. I learn best through doing and this is no exception. I feel awkward and lost and frustrated.

I made myself crank through the first part of a scribble page, and it sucks. I sketched and inked my characters and it also sucks.

But I’m learning.

And learning is good.

*yeah, he’s good for a quote, but honestly his methods are suspect.

Vacation Planning

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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

Related:

  • 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.