Author Archives: leslie

Saturday Sketchday and Solidarity

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Today I had my almost-bi-weekly sketching jaunt with my friend Jane. Today we decided to head to one of our favorite places for a little brunch before we headed out to sketch. It turned out to be a little cold for a lot of outdoor sketching so we settled in at a new café with coffee and our sketchbooks for some chit chat and doodling.

I adore these days with Jane and spending time devoted to just art. We talk about process and discuss the things we’re trying in our studio. We’ve made a plan to take a class about gelatin printmaking. Jane has convinced me to join one of the area arts groups and in person classes may be a byproduct.

Awesome.

After Jane and I parted ways I made a little side trip. In solidarity with my buddy Connie of DirtyFootprintsStudio I did a little urban recon and took a few pictures. Mhmm, say what you will, but there is something to be said about going where other people don’t and where you’re told you shouldn’t.

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Sometimes art pushes boundaries. To me that is what photography is all about. I have a friend who breaks into warehouses and takes pictures of the decay. His work blows my mind.

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The thing is when you go places where regular 9 to 5 people don’t go, you see stuff they don’t see. Abandoned buildings house vagrants, addicts and parties held by teens checking out from reality for awhile. The signs are clear as to what is going on, party leftovers, a user’s “works,” burnt spoons, candles burnt to nothingness, near fires, cigarette burns on furniture, ash burns on floors, empty liquor bottles, vials, baggies and little balloons. None of is pretty. It’s sadness in a physical form. There is beauty in the dirt and decay but there is nothing beautiful in the downward spiral.

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We can stick our heads in the sand about what we want to see or not, but some of us open our eyes and mind to the beauty in the decay while being wonderfully and horribly aware of the inherent sadness involved in what we’re seeing. Sometimes the sadness can bring tears to our eyes, but we’ve got to be aware of the truth.

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Friday Finds: Allie George on Art Journaling Ning

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A week or so ago a youtuber contacted me requesting some more information about art journaling. I gave the info, and she ask for more. I direcrted her towards Art Journaling Ning. I don't plug the site enough but for those of you who don't know I started AJ ning about 2 years ago to create a free space where people could learn and share what they know about art journaling, pass techniques around in a safe environment. At the time it was the ONLY site that was dedicated to ONLY art journaling. As far as I know it is still the only site dedicated to only art journaling. Other sites have cropped up that cater to some aspects of art journaling but I think AJ Ning is the most complete and has the most members.

Anyway, Allie George signed up and immediately started to share her images. I'm glad she did. You see her journals are exactly what I see as "art journal." They are raw, have writing, have great images, collage and paint. You can tell she focuses on the PROCESS of creating the page and not on the idea of a pretty page.

So eff yes, Allie George.

Check out all her work on AJ ning here, and check out a few of her pages here:

image from artjournaling.ning.com
image from artjournaling.ning.com
image from artjournaling.ning.com

Technique Tuesday: Color Laser Printer Sticker Sheet Transfer

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I’ve been messing around with my transfer technique a little more. I printed off a few of my pictures with a color laser printer onto the sticker backing sheet. The color print was very delicate, where I touched the print it scraped very easily. That being said it made a very interesting edge on one of the images- I used my finger nail and scraped the image edge up a bit to make it uneven- very cool looking.

Again, large areas of color didn’t transfer as well as smaller areas and line work. Go figure that something that is actually MORE detailed transfers better. But the breaks that appear in a larger full color image are very very cool. They look like something that has weathered in the rain and had layers peeled off.

Any areas of yellow left the sheet stained. I’m not sure this will transfer to other images or not, I’ll try that out a little later. Blues and reds transferred the best, yellows stained the sticker sheet but still transferred.

The printer I was working with was a much better printer than the cheap brother I have at home, and I expect that the quality of the HP toner has as much to do with the crisp transfer as anything else.

  • Smooth paper works best for this technique.
  • High heat on the iron works best. Move the iron around gently.
  • Peel the sticker sheet off after it is cooled for about 15 seconds, or more if it’s too hot to touch comfortably.

This whole thing has me wondering about printing onto other slick coated stock- would I be able to do a transfer with magazine stock? I've had printing snafus with my work printer when adding address information to company stock materials. I wonder if I just over printed one of those pages if I could just transfer it?

This begins more experimentation and a search for slick paper stock.

 

 

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 These are recent journal entries and I've edited out some of the content.

 

Just as an FYI the Schlitz can has sold, in case you needed it for your dirtbag nasty beer can collection.

Wordy Monday Evening: Snake Oil, Sharks, Resonate

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Lisa over at LifeUnity put up this post earlier and it resonated with me, in part because I’m going through some of the same balance issues but also because it’s a very real post and that is something I feel like the blog-o-sphere has been lacking.

Today Connie over at DirtyFootPrints posted this, and it also resonated with me. It’s also a place I’ve been in my head lately, thinking of what is “enough.” What is good enough? (more on this later.)

Aggression  and sharks.

Or as my Dad used to say, “There are assholes everywhere and some of ‘em, most of ‘em, are out to get you.” Often times my Dad meant this about boys (ha!) trying to get in my pants and people trying to take my money, but this applies to the wild internets*.

Let me back up here.

A few weeks back I decided I was going to cut back on what I allow into my internet and life. Every time someone put up a post on facebook or twitter that made me feel icky I unfollowed or hid them from my view. After another week went past I’d go back and check and see if their tweets or posts still made me uncomfortable, if they did, I unfollowed, blocked, and or unfriended them. It’s been about 3 or 4 weeks since I've been doing this and frankly the quality of my twitter feed has gone up, I’m genuinely interested in what people I’m following and I’m not burdened by reading stuff that offends me.**

Why do I do this? No one has the right to make me feel bad, When I allowed people to suck up MY time with their drama I was giving them power over my life and allowing them to waste MY time. Additionally I can't worry that I'm going to offend them, clearly they don't care if they offend me, so why am I concerned about offending them? 

It’s as if I gave them permission to crap on my good time.

So I’m done with it. The drama and the snake oil sales, done.

That’s another thing that is getting to me lately, the snake oil sales. If someone is selling you a promise to unlock your deepest inner power, it’s most likely snake oil. The only person who can do that is you. I’m  wary of someone who wants to whisper into my ear and ask me to do stuff that makes me feel icky. I’m not talking legit life coaches, teachers, licensed therapists and social workers who have been to school and trained to make you push your boundaries. I’m talking about the arm chair quarterbacks that want to tell me what to do when they haven’t put in the hard work themselves, the do as I say not as I do crowd.

I have made my way so far by listening to myself, going with what I feel is right. It’s why Art Journaling Ning is free and will always be free to join and enjoy with paid classes for those who are interested. I see this whole thing as living real.     

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Corrugated Cardboard Book

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About a week ago my coworker gave me some large sheets of cardboard. I often use them at work for making posters. Sometimes I take the sheets home and draw and sketch on them. This time I chopped them into 8×11 sized sheets and decided to make a book. I’ve wanted to practice some of the structures from Keith A. Smith’s book “Smith’s Sewing Single Sheets” for awhile. This is the second book I’ve made from this book, and once I figured out the structure and the stitching it’s about as difficult as any 2 needle Coptic stitch.

There are some areas where I need to work on my stitching but over all this is definitely a book structure I will make again. 

 

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For the cover I managed to find some honeycomb corrugated cardboard, I sanded the images off and then applied several layers of gesso to build texture. I then rubbed in some black gesso, several layers of asphaltum colored Golden glaze and then added a little unbleached titanium. I finished it off by added a heavy layer of satin varnish and then buffed that with bee’s wax. The pictures do not do this justice. There is a lot more depth to the color than shows in these pics.

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 Each of the leaves has 2 layers of gesso on one side.

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I’ll be honest; I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this book. The little issues with the stitching mean that I can’t (won’t) sell it but I think it’s such a cool structure that I want to do something with it. Part of making this was to make it prove to myself that I could do it.

Review: Poppin’s write-now Notebook

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A few weeks back I read a post on notebooklovespen about poppin.com a company that intends to sell color coordinated and stylish office supplies. A quick look at their product range shows a variety of cool looking and inexpensively priced items. They were offering a giveaway and I managed to snag 2 of their notebooks; one each of red and black. The packaging they arrived in was a nicely sized and colorful box with branded air bubbles and a cardboard piece that said “pleased to meet you” in a speech bubble above a staple remover. That packaging reminds me of the heyday of the dot com boom where a company would send you a giant package of branded product to try and get you to sign up for their particular product. Does anyone else remember AuctionRover?*

The notebooks measure 5×8.25 inches (129x210mm) and is filled with ivory lined paper. The cover is made of textured pleather and feels like a cross between the soft cover moleskine and an EcoSystem notebook. The elastic is a nice shade of gray and while snug stretches enough to allow for stuffing of the notebook. In the back is a roomy pocket and attached to the spine is a silvery gray place marker. The flyleaf has a series of boxes for you to put your name, address, title of the volume, and other assorted information.

Inside you find ivory colored pages with pale gray narrow ruling and some unusual margins. The for edge side of the paper has a very narrow margin, perfect for those of you in the GTD camp who like to check off your to do list as you move down it, or those of us who like to date our to do list. This would actually make a fantastic planner for someone who works off a task list. (Like the Pig Pog PDA) The header is ruled off with 3 boxes, one large and 2 small. It is an unusual and interesting ruling combination, and I like it.

The paper itself reminds me a lot of my old moleskines. It does feather with many FP inks and broader nibs will bleed and soak through like crazy. The ruling is ever so slightly raised and it does resist fountain pen ink. I do like the ruling because it’s so pale that it’s unobtrusive when a page is filled with text. Similar to the pale gray dots on a Rhodia Dot pad, these pale gray lines seem to disappear when the page is filled. The paper itself is smooth and really nice to write on, my other ink pens work just fine with this paper. In fact my broad nibbed lamy filled with Noodler’s Black didn’t soak through the page and only bleed through in places where I allowed my nib to rest for too long. My Platinum Preppy M nib did fine on this paper and did not show any bleed or show through.

I’ve been testing my toner transfer technique in this notebook and find the pages are taking to the technique very well. I’m getting crisp and clear transfers. I’m going to test out doodling and sketching in here to see how it responds. I suspect that like my fountain pen testing I’ll have to be careful with my selection of inks on this paper but I won’t let that stop me.

I’m not sure on the price point of these notebooks but I expect them to be in synch with the rest of their product line, ie a little higher than regular office supplies but not outrageous.

Take a look at some of the pics below:

 

 

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poppin.com goes live in June, so check their site out then.

 I've read that teh small version of these will be $5! If the large size is inline with that it will be a winner and trump, in my opionion, the Moleskine.

 

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Technique Tuesday: Sticker Paper Toner Transfer

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The other day at work I was about to toss away the backing sheet from some address labels. I looked at it's slick surface and thought about the fact it had already been through a laser printer and that in the past I'd stuck sheets missing a label or two through the printer and that the toner sort of flaked off those areas. I heard about a collage technique in which you cover each collage piece with gel medium, let it dry and then use a sticker sheet to cover the pieces and finally adhere it with an iron. So, I wondered, "What would happen if I ran this empty sheet through a laser printer, with the image reversed, and ironed just the TONER onto a sheet of paper/art journal page?"

Well it turns out you get the best damn toner transfer I've ever seen. Crisp, clean. clear, and nearly 100% transfer of the toner to paper. I haven't tested this on an art journal page but I'm sure the transfer will work just as well.

Here's what I did:

  • Clear the edges off the stitcker sheet
  • Set up an image in GIMP(photoshop, or some other program that will let you REVERSE your printing options or lettering)
  • Go to Image>transform> flip or use the "flip" tool
  • Flip Horizontally so your image is reversed
  • Select print
  • Tell the printer that you're using "thin" paper or a transparency, this uses a lower heat setting so the toner sits on the surface of your sticker sheet better.
  • Place this on your page, set your iron to a HIGH NO STEAM heat setting. (play around with heat settings to see what gives you the look you want. I found that high heat gave the crispest transfer, but lower heat settings distorted the image and left some toner on the sheet.)
  • Carefully iron the page, gently move the iron around, hitting ALL the toner with the iron.
  • Remove the iron
  • Allow the page to cool enough that you can touch it comfortably.
  • Gently peel off the sticker backing.
  • And shout out "HOLY CRAP IT WORKED!!!"

Alternately if you want to grunge this up, peel the sticker paper up when the toner is still hot, if any is still slightly stuck to the backing, it will stretch the toner out and distort your image/words. Then iron it again to get it stuck to the page. Let it cool and peel off the backing, subtle distortion.

This will NOT work with injet or ink based printers, as the ink will just bead off the sticker backing.

The sticker sheet can be used many times, but I found that after a few runs through the printer that the transfer was more and more grungy. I also found that large areas of black did not transfer as well as images with more lines and white.

I will be saving all the address label and sticker backing material frmo here on out, this is the BEST transfer technique I've ever used.

Here are some of my test pages and one page that is 100% from transfers.

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Observation: Looking Back into Old Journals

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I was looking through one of my older moleskine sketchbooks specifically the one I started writing in then I first moved to Massachusetts. One of the thigns that I wrote about a lot was simplicity. I had lived in a small 3-ish room apartment in the woods of Maine. My apartment was essentially 1 large L-shaped room, a half wall divided the kitchen from the living “room” and a wall with a doorway divided the kitchen from the bedroom. There was no door on the bedroom. The only room that had a door was the bathroom, which housed a shower stall, toilet, sink and a bunch of shelves. Total square feet of the apartment was maybe 600sq ft. If the walls had not been vaulted it would have been awesome.

When I moved to Mass the apartment I moved into wasn’t much larger. Over the years we moved from about 600sq ft to about 700 sq ft and now we are in a 1200 sq ft house, we’ve got about 300 to 500 sq ft we don’t use all that often. Sometimes I feel like it’s too much space and other times I feel like it’s not enough. I am really thankful we’ve got a garage and a basement, both of which feel decadent after years of living without a space to work on bikes, engines and greasy things that don’t belong on kitchen or coffee tables.

I feel like I need to revisit this simplicity concept . It’s not like we live extravagantly, simplicity is something I strive for, but sometimes I get caught up in ridiculousness and making things more complex than they need to be. I need to cut that out.

I tend to think of simplicity as going hand-in-hand with organization. As I look around my office I think perhaps I should start here and work my way out.

On a side note anytime I think of simplicity I have to think of my art and what materials I would work in if I could only chose a few supplies to keep with me. I have to say I’d probably go with pen and ink with watercolor. It gives me color and the ability to draw.

If you could only pick 3 art materials to use for the next 6 months what would you use?

bane of my existance

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Around the time of my birth every city in the NorthEast decided it would be a great city beautifying project to plant oranmental trees around their cities. Think about it- pretty flowers it the spring, green leaves all summer and no fruit to clean up in the fall. It's a win right?

Except for people like me. I'm allergic to the little babies show below, the Bradford Ornamental Pear. Pretty white flowers with a shit load of pollen. So cheers to city beautification, I'm taking another claratin and washing it down with my morning coffee.

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They sure do make a pretty picture