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Using Photos in my Journal
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Author Archives: leslie
Journal Photography
Call this a Blog Circle, Jazmin, Traci Bunkers and I decided we’re all write on the same subject this week. Our topic for the week is: Using photography and photos in our art journals.
I’ve been talking to Jazmin aka Sirensidyll about how we both use cameras in our art journals. The more I talked to her the more I realize that my cameras are an integral part of my art journaling process. I have a camera in my bag pretty much everywhere I go. Here’s a brief overview of the cameras I use:
My iPod touch
A Canon Ixus 1100
and a Olympus Pen PL2 with a variety of vintage lenses
In the past, before I got the iPod touch I used my Canon Ixus point and shoot more often than I do now. It was small and I could slip it into my bag and take it anywhere. My Canon P&S takes great clear pictures. Now that I have an iPod touch 4th generation I’ve got a smaller camera I can take anywhere. The photos it takes are not as good as the Canon but it does a pretty good job. Additionally I can download a bunch of cool apps for my iPod that adapt and change the appearance of the image. I take one of these 2 with me everywhere.
In the summer I take my Olympus Pen PL2 with me almost everywhere. I purchased a few vintage lenses and an adapter so that the old manual lenses can be used. The old fashioned and antique lenses lend a different look and coloration than modern lenses. With the vintage or new lenses it takes sharp crisp photos with great color.
I use the iPoo for 90% of my image (not accurate mathmatically.) It’s so small and portable that I forget I’m carrying it. I don’t worry about dropping it, well much, and it doesn’t weight me down. Sure, it doesn’t have fancy lenses but it captures ideas as well as a thumbnail sketch.
Something that is unusual about photography, at least for me, is that I didn’t start taking pictures until I was in my last year at college. For that last year, I used disposable point and shoot cameras that I took to the local pharmacy for development. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I got my first “real” camera, a Canon ELPH, and it took bright crisp and clear images. I still have that camera, though I never use it. Shortly after that I got my first digital, and HP something or the other, a 1.2 mega pixel brick, and by brick, I mean it was brick sized, shaped and weight. After using that camera to it’s death I graduated to a Canon Digital ELPH and kept it for years.
Wednesday we’ll all talk about what apps and programs we use to manipulate our images. Check out Jazmin and Traci's posts on their blogs.
All images in this blog post were shot with my iPoo touch 4th gen I'll talk about the apps I use in the next post. (I refer to my iP0d as the iPoo to avoid attracting attention from the spam brigade.)
Videos of Cowboy Drawings
I've writen previously about my obsession with the cowboys in Flickr's Commons. I even crafted my first Challenge! on ArtJournaling.ning.com around them. For the Challenge! I recorded myself sketching a few cowboys from the Commons. View the videos here and then head over to ArtJournaling.ning.com to check out the Challenge! and join in on the fun.
Challenge!
Challenge! is a group on ArtJOurnaling.ning.com that includes weekly challenges for art journalers. The group is free and donation based. It seems NIng has blocked me form being able to add a paypal button on my Challenge! pages. So here is the donation page for Challenge! If Challenge! has inspired or motivated you to work in your art journal, please consider a donation to help me run the site.
in practice: tell it to the page
The DayJob has a book club. We get to chose one of 3 books and then convene over dinner at a nice restaurant. I suppose that the goal at that point is to talk about the books but since I never go to the dinners I don’t really know the actualities of what occur, mostly though, I think people get drunk*.
Anyway. The memoir I chose irritated me. About half way in the writing style changed and the author wrote about something that irritated this crap out of me. Already the author wasn’t a very like-able character but this one aspect of her life bugged the crap out of me. She went on for pages explaining the whys and hows of what she’d done but it still… Irritated me. Begrudgingly I made my way through the last 100 pages of the book. Everything about the end of the book bugged the shit out of me. From that one point on, the author seemed arrogant, self absorbed, and annoying. Even at the end of the book I’m left irritated.
When I first got to that irritating passage I started to tweet about it, thought better of it, and wrote in my journal instead. I realized that what I was about to tweet would need more explaining than 140 characters. It didn’t belong on twitter or facebook. My incoherant rage directed toward an, at that point, faceless, author, didn’t belong online. It would have been far too difficult to explain.
The end point of this story is that sometimes we all need to just settle down and tell it to the page.
Stacked like cord wood
Challenge!
I’m pretty stoked to tell you all about the Challenge! group on AJ Ning. I’ve asked a group of my arty friends to help me out by being Hosts. Each month a new host will introduce the Challenge! Each Challenge! has 3 parts: Images, Colors, and Material. Depending on the host, you might get images they shots, copyright free images from Flickr’s Commons.
The images are meant to give you some inspiration. You don’t have to draw them, or even use them as collage fodder for your journal. You could be inspired by them to write about them, or doodle a new pattern, or even, write about how much you hate them.
The colors again, are meant as inspiration. You can use one or all of them in your art journal. You could do a whole page in one color, or 2 or 3. You could try and mix the colors. There are so many options with color it’s amazing. What about staining paper?
The material challenge is the cult of stuff aspect, use it up! If you have it in your stash, use it up! Test it out, use this Challenge! to try it out in multiple ways, learn how to use that one material in every way possible. Try it, test it!
Each Challenge! will lasts 2 weeks, then the next will start. We get each host for a month!
Postcard Exchange!
I don’t often do exchanges with other artists. There are many reasons, most of which is the fear that I won’t finish or worst yet be judged by artists that I like, a lot. So when it was suggested by 2 ladies that make really excellent art that I participate in a postcard exchange I said yes, but with reservations in my ability to produce 2 postcards of any quality and worried about judgement. Ultimately I was motivated by lust greed, I REALLY wanted a piece of Jazmin and Tammy’s art in my hands.
I made a stack of postcard sized images on heavy watercolor paper and let them sit. Then about a week before they were due I rifled through the images and picked 2 that I liked. I addressed and stamped them and sent them on their journey. (To see the one I sent Jazmin go here. And to see the one I sent Tammy see here.)
In return I was sent 2 beautiful pieces of mail art.
I’ll show them off in the order they arrived:
Jazmin:
Tammy/DaisyYellow:
Everything I see is just so perfectly “them.” Even if they hadn’t signed the pieces i’d know exactly who made what and when. So awesome So Amazing. Go see their blogs Jazmin and Tammy.
Do you want to get in on a postcard swap? Check out iHanna's swap over here.
Review: Pentel Hybrid Technica .04
This pen came free with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, I wasn’t expecting much from it, honestly I thought it looked like “just another rollerball.” These are available from Jetpens, Amazon, Blick and other assorted places all over the net. Blick’s seems to offer the best price on the 4 pack of sizes, and you’re probably going to want to test these out yourself after you read my review.
So, yes, it’s a rollerball. It’s an ultra fine point rollerball with a tungsten tip. The 04 tip is fine, very fine, much thinner than any .05 tip I’ve seen. It’s close in size to the fine sized RapioCraft pen. The ink is VERY black and crisp. The edges hold up well even when writing across damp sections of the page. It doesn’t spread. It will spread if you add water to it when it’s still wet. Once dry this ink is waterproof, even on acrylic. It dries relatively quickly on paper but takes a LONG time to dry completely on acrylic. It writes well over acrylic, not quite as well as a regular cheap-o Bic but well enough that I’d use it again.
It comes in sizes from .03 up to .08, with the .07 and .08 sizes more difficult to find. The pens also come in 4 packs of sizes .03- .06. I could see a 4 pack of these becoming a regular writing, drawing and sketching tool. It comes with a cap or as a retractableThe various websites make the following claims: acid free, archival, light fast, waterproof (true), and fade resistant. I can’t address the rest of the claims but I can say that it is waterproof.
I’m definitely impressed with this pen. I’ll be buying more of these to have in my sketching kit as well as my art journaling kit.
tell it to the page
You don't see all of the stuff in my art journals or sketchbooks. Some of it I keep for me.
It's private.
My every thought does not need to be shared.
Some of the stuff in those pages is dark. Some of the stuff in my head is dark. It's not pretty. It'll never be pretty. I'm not talking about it being grungy and dark so it doesn't fit the rampant aesthetic of pretty in art journals. No. That is not what I mean.
Rage isn't pretty.
Hate isn't pretty.
Confusion isn't pretty.
None of that needs to be pretty when I'm thinking it through. It's not for you.
It was never meant for you.
The beauty of an art journal is that you can close the cover.
Meditate on the rage/hate/confusion and move on with your life.
No one needs to know.
That's okay.
After you spew your issues to the world and the drama queens and gossip vultures strip you bare, leaving your bones to bleach in the sun what do you have?
Your art journal and a heavy heart.
Tell it to the page.