Author Archives: leslie

Sell Out

Gwen Seemel posted this little nugget of awesome about selling out and starving artists. As I read it, it struck me that my definition of “sell out” is different. For me someone has sold out when they go against their professed ideals. When someone tells me they are for certain things and they go against those certain things to become successful by compromising their ideals. to me selling out is the opposite of success it’s conforming to whatever need comes up and doing what others expect, so you can make a buck.

What are your thoughts? What makes someone a sell out? Is selling out real?

(I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting that those of us who have a DayJob are sell outs, but people who go against their personal and voiced ideals. haveing a Dayjob is a necessity for most artists.)

Review: FlexiSketch Sketchbook

Swirl

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I created a tiny little swirl on twitter yesterday when I responded to #talkart and said, “I price to move, reasonably, so anyone can afford”.. Many people disagreed with me. I’ve always thought about art as a by the people for the people sort of thing and frowned upon people who felt that art was a higher calling.

I have always looked at art as a form of communication, a way for me to get these ideas out of my head that don’t have words, just visuals.

I’ve always wanted to share that with people. Its part of the reason I started the blog, Art Journaling Ning, my zines, and my art. Communication- Sharing

It’s why I was a teacher and why I continually seek to teach, here, ning and now I’ll be doing classes in person. It’s also why I sell my art at the price I sell it. People tell me it’s low. I tell them it’s my price, my right to set it at what I want. I could do prints but I don’t like the idea of them, plus, for the price of a print you can get an original piece of art to hang.

I want everyone to be able to save up and afford an original of my art. Everyone deserves to have real art in their home.

I’ll price larger pieces differently, but for now, the 5×7 pieces remain at their current price point.

Review: Loew Cornell Simply Art Fine Tip Marker 4 Pack

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Loew Cornell Simply Art Fine Tip Marker $5.99/ 4 pack @ Joann's

I was doing some comparison shopping for my upcoming class on pen and ink drawing and I stumbled upon the Loew Cornell Fine Tip 4 pack at Joann’s for $5.99. They claim to be water resistant and non- bleeding. One look at the package and you can tell they are clearly a knock off of Pigma Micron pen put out by Sakura. The short cap, metal clip, and cap post on the end of the pen gives it away.

The markers are sold in a blister package with some claims and suggestions. The first claim is that they are water resistant. The second they won’t bleed. The back of the package suggests that you can use them with watercolors and other markers. I’ll get to these claims shortly.

The pens have a matte black barrel that is comfortable to hold. The pen is very lightweight. The cap posts securely to the back end of the marker with a satisfying click. While writing with the marker I found the ridge where the nib section meets the barrel to be quite sharp and uncomfortable. I suspect that this will be the main reason I stop using these markers.

While writing I found the fiber tip to be quite smooth on all pens but the largest, .08, and that nib was dry, as if it had dried out in it’s packaging or was out of ink. The sketching experience was not bad at all, the line was smooth and consistent for each tip. There is no line variation unless you switch pens. The ink is black but seems to gray out as it dries, leaving behind a dark gray line rather than a black line.

An additional flaw is that the cap is the only part with a size designation and it’s easily missed so caps could easily be put on the wrong pen. The barrels are only marked with the Loew Cornell name.

As for the water resistance, they are, sort of. I found that a lot of the ink lifted with a fast brush over with water. Leaving behind a strong gray area in any spot that was damp. There was a LOT of bleeding that would discolor any watercolor wash applied over it. This also washed out the lines. I went over my test area with another brush load of water and worked the area with the brush, nothing that would be called a scrub, and with a soft brush. The thinnest lines lifted almost completely and black lines were left grayer than before. The gray that is left is a very nice color. Knowing that these create a wash like this is actually pretty useful, one could throw these into a sketch kit with a waterbrush and get some pretty nice sketches with a wide range of tones of gray.

All in all these aren’t a bad value for $6 as long as you take the negatives into consideration- the grip itself, that one of the 4 pens I got wasn’t working properly, they are kinda water resistant, and that only the cap is marked for size. On the good side of things, you get 4 markers that write a lot like a Micron for a lot less, make wonderful washes, are all black and write pretty smoothly.

I’d recommend these for anyone who is interested in trying out this style of pen- very fine fiber tip. I don’t think these will sell you on the style though, they are too uncomfortable to write/sketch with for long periods of time…. Though a nail file might take the sharp edge off the grip area… Might try that, if I do I’ll let you know all about it. I want to suggest these for kids, but I don't want people to assume that I'm saying they are only for kids. I guess I'd say these are good for older kids- teenagers who are sketching for art class, or are writing or for someone who wants to test this style of pen out. you won't get the same performance as you would with a Micron but it's a good point to start.

UPDATE: I have been using these in SOME of my cowboy sketches and I've found them far more comfortable to sketch with than I'd have expected. We're not talk ing 2 hour long drawing sessions, more like 15 to 20 minute drawing sessions. I amend my previous statement about them being uncomfortable to being mostly comfortable for sketching. Add to that the blending capability when water or ink is added really adds an other level of darks to my gray ink brush pen. I'll need to test it and see if it's lightfast before I suggest it for anything other than sketching.

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Realistic vs Unrealistic Goals

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I've been planning on doing a little side project from all my other projects, because, you KNOW I need another project! The side project is loosely called "You Said Something, It Was Really Important." (OR, "You Said Something, I've Never Forgotten.")* It consists of photos from my journal, taken all hi-res, made into a PDF and then loaded to MagCloud. From there you'll be able to get a magazine or a download or both. Awesome.

As I was concieving this little project it took a lot less time in my mind, shooting pictures should take X amount of time, creating the PDF should take X amount of time, I can get it done in a night!

Not.

Shooting hundreds of pictures takes hours, not an hour. When you take a picture of a journal you end up having to figure out the BEST way to get the image and it took a few minutes of set up and a couple of tries to get a set up that worked properly for most of my journal page. Also , please note that a large sheet of plexi glass keeps your pages flat and a polarizing filter helps cut the glare and makes colors pop. Once i figured that out I STILL had to wade through the good and the bad in the journals. Some of the stuff is too personal and other still could get me fired from the DayJob if I publish it. I tried to keep a good balance and stayed on the edge- you get to see some stuff that I haven't put online, in hi res, printed glory AND I get to stay employed. It's a win!

In the end I realize I've got more than once zine's worth of stuff or one really FAT zine full of stuff. I'm struggling with how big do I want to make this thing? 50 Pages? 90 pages? 150 pages? Add to that, if I do 150 pages then I'll probably never do another, and I think I want to do another. Also the cost of the thing goes up dramaticaly if I do more than 50 pages. I want to keep it affordable. (BUT, how cool would a 150 page zine be?)

The other part of this is, I really thought, once I shoot the pictures I can flood them into publisher and get my PDF done. Yeah not so easy. There is no easy way to flood 50 images into publisher all at the same size. They all come in at different sizes, need to be resized to the correct size, put in the RIGHT spot, contract and color tweaked so they look correct, background color chosen, etc… Graphic designers of the world I salute you. (Also please tell me that the Adobe suite is easier to use than publisher… Future goal: get a Mac and Adobe.)

So I'm about 33% done and feeling kind of bummed that I won't be able to finish this by the weekend. "You Said Something" won't be ready for another week or so. I'm still debating if I add captions or not. How many words do I add, if I add any at all? Maybe that should all be hand written too… You see where I'm going here? I'm one of those peopel that dives into a project like this head first, no plans and figures it out as I go along,I give myself unrealistic and unattainable goals and then I'm surprised when I bung it up.

So now I know ho wmuch work goes into this, I'll make sure I set more realistic goals in the future.

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Review: Jinhao 602 Fountain Pen

Chongolio on Youtube

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I'm not sure how I missed these videos, but now that I've found him, I'm kinda in love. He offers nononsense BS free art journaling ideas and advice, and it's good. Oh He also uses some images of gears in his AJ. Watch them all, give him some thumbs up love and share his stuff.

Head over to his youtube to see the rest of his videos. Good stuff.

Watching some RSAnimate

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Yesterday I met with a friend of mine, he's a terrific artist and we had a nice long chat over great coffee. During our talk we spoke of the TED talk about school killing creativity. When I got home I looked up the talk, it's a good one and linked below. You should watch it.

In some ways I think that our root fear of play and experimentation in our art and journals, where does it go as we age? We were all pretty creative when we were 5 and 6 and even 7. But at some point we all want to draw realistically (this is tied to developmental milestones) and I think get frustrated and quit. If you look at most kids at specific ages they all go through this. Some of us never get past the frustration.

The next video is about the paradox of choice. It's not directly related to art, but I think you'll see why I put it up here. I think we get into a mode of overwhelming choice when we walk into an art and craft store. It's why it's so easy for companies to shove crap down our throat when we don't really need or want it. Step 1: Overwhelm the consumer with too many choices and Step 2: Prey upon that and TELL them they NEED specific parts to create a project. Never-mind that you could unlock their creativity by teaching skills rather than spoon-feeding a specific project. But then unlocking creativity isn't as good for the bottom line as selling a specific project that requires the person buy items off a list. (Think #cultofstuff)

The final video, in which I think I could do an entire post about, is about the movement about staying positive, and that you can bring everything to you by presenting a positive front. Slap a smile on your face and everything you've ever dreamed of can be YOURS! I'm not afraid to say that sometimes my life and my brain are dark dark lonely places. Sad. I've got a relatively good life- a nice enough house, a car that runs, a lovely wife, a DayJob that pays my bills, and good health. Honestly, I've got it better than many people. I'm happy about that, I won't lie. But there are days when I hate everything about life. It's not wrong to say that sometimes, life isn't fair and life sometimes sucks. That's realistic.

I'm not suggesting we all let it hang out. No, I think we should be realistic in what our lives are like, it's not all sunshine and roses, sometimes it's dog crap on the floor and a flat tire on the highway or a bad day at the job. Not being honest about these facts of our lives is as ridiculous as always painting a smile on your face and pretending they don't happen. These dark spots are WHY I art journal. I pour the shit out onto a page and then turn it. I paint dark little scenes on watercolor paper and then pour ink on it. Denying these aspects of my life isn't honoring myself. Hiding it away doesn't make it go away. No matter how many pretty pages you paint in your art journal doesn't make everything alright.

The process is what makes things right not the product. It's okay to slather paint on a page and just turn the page and never look at it again, every page does NOT have to be finished. MOve on, just like your life moves on. It's the nature of an art journal that you move on. You grow as a person and grow in the art journal. Don't let false positivity hold you back from creating something that is wonderful because you are afraid to explore something that is not happy or perceived as not positive.

A Challenge for the Weekend

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I'm not usually a huge fan of issuing challenges but here's one I can get behind:

This weekend make some art that is destined for the trash. Don't let anyone else see it or feel free to show it on the ComfortableShoesStudio facebook wall. But set yourself free and see what you learn from creating something without the pressure of making it pretty.

For one weekend make stuff that has meaning only to you.

For one weekend make marks on the page that please only you.

For one weekend mix your paints in colors that you are afraid of.

For one weekend use colors taht challenge you.

For one weekend make a page in your art journal taht you haven't planned out.

Scribble. Doodle. Write.

Do somethng in your art journal that you've never done before.

Set yourself free.

Draw for the Trash

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Matthew Archambault of Drawing Tutorials Online wrote:

It's super important when drawing that you don't put too much pressure on yourself to draw for the museum wall. Draw instead for the waste paper basket and you too will have that care free attitude when it comes to drawing.

It's a point I've been thinking about over and over and over again for the last few months. A question I've asked myself repeatedly is, "Why do I enjoy sketching and drawing so much but many people I've met don't?" I think Matthew's point is exactly why. When I'm working in my art journal I'm not thinking about making great art or a finished page. I'm simply working on the page, a page isn't good or bad, it just is.

This is a drastic difference from the way I see many new art journalers approach their page. They want each page to be a perfect piece and get very discouraged when the page doesn't end up just as it is in their head. Putting pressure on yourself to create exactly what is in your head is a exercise in frustration and I think it's why so many people give up on art journaling and return to scrapbooking.

I always put an emphasis on process in my classes and on my own art. Process will eventually get you to the end result you seek, it isn't an easy or guaranteed path but it's rewarding.

Comfortable Shoes Studio

Musings about art and writing supplies.