Author Archives: leslie

Wordy Weekender: the power to blow my mind

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Yesterday I was listening to a piece by the Vitamin String Quartet, a remake of one of my favorite songs from my youth, and it brought me to tears. I’m happy to say that I grew up with Nirvana and Alice in Chains and a variety of other great bands emerging. I was a closet music fan, not telling my friends about my Ass Ponys tapes or Pixies CDs, afraid that if I went too far out from their mainstream box they might judge. I had one friend in HS with whom I talked about music, Melissa, she was a metalhead and when I found Facelift I immediately made her a copy.

I had one of those moments while listening to the VSQ where I realized that I create art in the hopes it moves someone in the same way. Every now and then I get an email from someone telling me they found my stuff on youtube, flickr or art journaling ning and that it moved them.

Here are some videos from my youth. The Ass Ponys still rock.

 

There is something to be said for remakes of music done with strinq quartets.
This blows my mind.

Wordy Friday: Riding This Bus

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I don't read a lot of blogs as religiously as I read Connie, Paul, and Lisa's. Why? Well, they post a lot of eye candy photos and words that I find relevant to my life, you know stuff that makes me think.

Thinking is good.

Connie recently posted this little ditty.

It made me think.

In some spots I disagree and others I agree.

I look at my time as the most precious thing, well, ever. I don't have a lot of it. I've only got this one life. I've only got the time that has been allotted to me. When people come at me with hate and anger I choose to ignore them and shut them out.

I have learned to make liberal use of gmail's block function and the IP address blocking ability of typepad.

People who send me hate filled rants via email want to waste my time. I've learned the hard way that giving them attention simply feeds the beast and distracts from things that add meaning to my life.

Another person's rage does not add meaning to my life.

Another person's anger does not add meaning to my life.

Responding to another person's rage and anger detracts from my life.

I refuse to give someone who thinks only with hate, power over my time and allow them to detract from my life.

While it's not up to me to determine who I bump into on this journey, I do determine how I respond and ultimately I decide who I allow on my bus.

Review: Liquitex Basics Coarse Texture Gel

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The last time I was in AC Moore I noticed that Liquitex had released the Basics line of mediums again. This time in 200ml squeeze tubes. I’ve gone on record by saying that the Liquitex Basic Gel Medium is my favorite, and I can’t wait to take my 50% off coupon in and get another tube. This time around the tubes, all of them retail for $7.99, where the old versions retailed for $5.99. Higher gas prices= higher paint prices.

All of these mediums come in tubes. Which I like. I can squeeze a very tiny amount of paint out onto my palette and not waste a drop. They have  modeling paste, gloss gel medium, iridescent medium,coarse texture gel and one other I can't remember. I've purchased gloss gel, coarse texture gel and the modeling paste.

I’ve been obsessed with texture lately so I picked up a tube of coarse texture gel. (Next week I’ll review the Golden version.) Out of the tube it had a heavy body and held its shape well. I used an old credit card to scrape it around on my board. It was wet enough that it stuck down easily and I felt like once it was down it was staying down. The grittiness of it was about like 100 grit sandpaper. It looks like fine beach sand embedded on the page. It held every shape I introduced to the page with my old credit card. I’d shy away from putting this on with a good brush, I did mention that it looks like sandpaper right? This will wear the tips down on just about any brush, especially a good natural hair brush. Stick to your gesso brush or an older synthetic while using any coarse sand filled texture gel.

Clean up was easy, warm soap and water took the still damp gel off my hands with ease.

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It’s been about 8 hours since I scraped a relatively heavy layer of the stuff onto my binder’s board and it’s still not completely dry. Granted we (the North East) are sitting in the midst of a incredibly high humidity cloud right now, but it has taken an incredibly long time for this to dry. It was dry to the touch with some hair drier action and I was able to gesso over the top of the gel in about an hour. If I wanted to sand or carve into the gel I’ll need to wait for it to be completely dry. Gessoing over the top of the gel is not necessary it’s ready to go as a base as is, but I wanted to add another layer of texture to the board. Like most gels this one should dry flexible, but I’ve not tested that yet.

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This is a fun additive and I can see it having many applications both for an art journal but also for paintings on canvas and board. It’s got a coarse but not overly coarse texture, like fine beach sand. If you want additional texture you could add more sand. If you are looking for something that looks like cement right out of the tube you might want to look at Golden’s Coarse Pumice Gel, which I’ll be reviewing next week.

 

FYI: I purchased this product for review and was not compensated by any of the companies mentioned in this review.

gray

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It's been gray and dismal here for almost a week and it's predicted that we'll get more rain next week. Yawn. The weather makes me want to crawl back into bed and snooze. So far we've had less sun this spring than we did in February.

I've been working though. I'm doing a review, tomorrow, on Liquitex Coarse Texture Gel and in a week I'm doing one on Golden Coarse Pumice Gel. Good stuff, adds a whole new layer of texture to a page or in this case a cover.

I'm also working on a technique tuesday where I alter a cover with modeling paste and build up layers of glaze to create an antique beat up looking cover. I've done one cover already and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's one way to take a boring composition book and make it super cool. The great thing about it is how cool it feels, smooth but rough. The other texture  pastes and gels are the same way they feel really cool.

I can't wait to show some of the stuff I'm working on.

Also I'd like to ask who I pay off to get a little sun. I could really use some.

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.

 

 

  • Ink mix0082
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  • Ink mix0084
Ink mix0084

 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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