Author Archives: leslie

Weekend Snap Shot

This weekend I shot a lot of video footage and loaded a bunch of stuff to youtube. I have found a method of editing that takes less time than what I was doing and I’m doing fewer takes of each video. *PHEW* I was burning up a lot of battery life on all those takes.

I’m using was GlamourBomb refers to as “sandwich editing.” In which I have created a set intro and a set final scene then all I need to do is add the filling- the new videos. Piece of cake.

Add to that I have the boom mic stand set up in the office where I do most of my art journaling, it makes it super easy to stick the camera on the mount and start making art.

If you haven’t made it over to artjournaling.ning.com yet for the “New to Art Journaling” group you should certainly head over and check it out. I’ve added some exclusive content to the group that won’t be shown anywhere else. I’ll be putting out more content that is exclusive to the NAJ group. Head over, ask questions and we’ll see if I can answer them, or find you answer.

Easy Leather Cord Keepers

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I saw these over on the jetpens blog and I thought to myself, "I bet I can make those out of leather." Here are my results:

It's a simple project. Cut a strip of leather .75 inches wide (15mm or so) and 3 inches long (7.5cm). Get some no sew snaps- I used 7/16th's size because it was all Michael's carried and I was too lazy to stop someplace else. Use the tools to hammer on the snaps, the snapping together bits must be on the same side of the leather to make these.I left just enough leather on each end so I could grab it and pull the snaps apart.

They work AWESOME.

These could be made with canvas or fabric as well. I could see these made out of vinyl too. So many possibilities with sucha simple project!

Thinning the Herd

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During my period of less tweeting and more action I went through my blog reader and culled out the following:

blogs that seemed like adverts
blogs that only focus on the pretty
blogs that were product focused
blogs that were focused on making the person out to me something they aren’t
anything that didn’t inspire/interest me

I focused on blogs that I go back to and read again and again. Blogs with good instructional content. Blogs with great photos and discussion. Blogs about the messy part of art. Blogs about the hard parts of art. Blogs about exploration; of the world and mind.

I was left with a handful of good blogs, blogs I read every time they post, blogs that if they don’t post I wonder where they’ve been, and when they do post I think, “YES!”

There’s a ton of info out there to filter through and sometimes it’s overload.

I’m trying to filter it the easy way- using the tools I’ve got.

What do you do to filter the cacophony of info?

Bryan Meador from Vimeo

Automatic Drawing

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Nothing quite like unwinding after a hard day at the grindstone with a little automatic drawing.

observations on making videos

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I’ve been messing around with my video camera, my iPoo, and the boom mic stands that I use to hold them. I picked up a couple of official iPoo* tripod holders and for less than $5 each they are a little better than my clamp method, and cheaper, but don’t have that kludge** factor. They are a little less strong/ sturdy than my holder, but I can see how they can easily be made a lot stronger, so should I need to, I can adapt them.

I took an evening and a 1 minute clip and decided to figure out the RIGHT settings to manage quality, speed of render, speed of upload(aka file size) for videos I plan on uploading to YouTube with my software. At one point I got super frustrated with the included help and the official online help and delved into google. Go figure, I should have done that in the beginning. I found a helpful YouTube channel explaining which settings to use to get rid of the letterboxing (don’t use the obvious settings, duh!) Rendering is still not at the speed of my iPoo but it does do a much higher quality video AND I can do longer videos plus I can use a variety of different music, do a voice over if I want, and add effects.

I found some music to use with my videos as well, stuff I haven’t heard a million times before and fits my style. I’m really happy with that. I need to put it on my iPoo so I can use it consistently across the board. I am trying to stay away from stuff that has copyright or isn't made for use.

I’m trying to keep my videos to particular lengths- sketching or drawing videos with no instructional content are under 3 minutes, Q&A videos are under 5, instructional videos can go as long as they need to go. i’m considering some review videos on favorite products.

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Carlos from Vimeo

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I really enjoy this guy's style. There is something to be said about viewing art from people not from the US and their distinct style. There is definately something cultural about differences in sketching styles.