Author Archives: leslie

Happy Holidays

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I want to take a brief moment and thank everyone for coming by my blog and reading. You give me constant inspiration and enjoyment. I truly enjoy and read every comment, though I can't always comment back (I hope that changes in the coming year) I want to thank YOU all for commenting and making this past year wonderful.

I hope that your holiday is as warm and bright as mine is shaping up to be. I wish you love and happiness for the holiday and the upcoming year. Make art!

 

As a thank you to all the blog readers, I'm announcing here first that I'm going to offer OSA: Drawing 101 as a self study session. You can read more about it here.

Some more stuff for the upcoming year- Reviews

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Part of what I want to add to this blog is a series of reviews. I’d like to review journals, products, books and other items one might use in journaling; both art and written.

I’m developing a format for reviewing journals and products associated with journaling. Obviously journals will have their paper reviewed in terms of suitability for wet/dry media as well as how that paper holds up to the abuse of mixed media. I think that a good art journal needs to also have pages that can be written on with a variety of tools- sharpies, fountain pens, pencils and other markers. I’ll address such things as strike through, bleed through and warping. Obviously this sort of journal review will be vastly different from how paper reviews are done on blogs that focus solely on one aspect of journaling. I have passed over paper that people adore on other sites and adored paper that some people despise.

So I invite people to contact me if they’d like to have their journals and sketchbooks reviewed. Each review will be linked to the seller’s site with plenty of contact info.

I’ve got a ton of products that I used and, sadly some I don’t use. I’m going to reach into my tool kit and evaluate some of these products. The perspective will be that of a mixed media artist. Can I layer the product? Does it stand up to uses the manufacturer suggests and doesn’t suggest? Is it useful? Is the price acceptable or outrageous? 

I’ve got a deep bookcase and I’m going to pull some of the stuff off the shelf, not just new books but older books and review them. I’ve been doing this in part for the zine, but I’ve focused on new books. I want to help people build up a book shelf of their own with books that are really useful resources for art journalers.

The reviews will start in January/ February and I’ll be hopefully be able to do one each week.

My hope is to make this blog more of a resource than it already is.

Anyone who is interested in having their product reviewed can email me: leslie(dot)herger(at)gmail(dot)com

A little hiatus, back in the new year

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So as you’ve noticed I’ve been absent from my blog and from the internets. Sometimes I need a break from the whole internet to recharge and reinvent the blog.  Part of this has been that I’m writing my new classes (3 of them swwwweeeeet) and I simply don’t have time between the DayJob, the Zine, and course development to devote as much time as I would like to the blog. I try not to post stuff that isn’t well thought out and my mind is eye-ball deep in course development and I have trouble thinking of anything else. Shifting gears is hard when the mind is a jumble of so much stuff.

That being said, my devotion to making a good, well planned and well thought out course is what is causing me to hit the skids on the blog. I’ll be back in January with a plan, Stan; hopefully it will be one everyone likes to some extent.

I’ve also been on winter vacation from UStream. With my studio being cold, the Dayjob hours picking up due to the holidays, and other various stuff; I haven’t been able to make a plan for it that I like. When I go back to it I will not be broadcasting EVERY week, rather I’ll go to a once a month or every other week format. Why? It was stressing me out. On days I wasn’t able to broadcast I’d get a bunch of offensive tweets that made me not want to do the broadcast ever again. It's not cool to threaten suicide because someone can't broadcast. I started doing the UStream because it was fun, suddenly it got a whole lot less fun. When I go back it will be with certain rules for the chat. I’m not putting up with rudeness or harassment of any sort, period. Anyone who partakes in fighting will be blocked, both parties. Anyone who is rude will be blocked. Anyone who gives me a hard time via twitter/FB or chat will be blocked; banned for life. I'm not going to warn people either, behave or get out. Life is too short to deal with ridiculous shenanigans in a damn chat. I’ll try it out for a month or 2 if I’m still feeling irritated by UStream I’m done with it except for classes.

So I've made a few plans for when I come back, the first show will be showing you how to make the midori traveller knock off. The next will be exploring some simple pamphlet binding options. After that I'm still up in the air for what I'll be doing. I think you'll notice I'll be doing a lot more bookbinding on my show in addition to the usual art journaling.

 

Faux Midori Traveler

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<p>So this weekend (or was it last week) I made a Midori traveler knock off. Essentially I really liked the idea of the Traveler system but hated the idea of being tied into weirdly sized notebooks; also the price tag of $40USD was a tad to steep for me. So I took a look at the system- a sheet of stiff leather, hole dead center for the closure and 2 holes at the center of each long side with a piece of elastic cord threaded through the holes. Easy to replicate.</p>
<p>For my first UStream show in January I’ll be showing you just how to replicate this thing, it’s ridiculously easy. You’ll need to buy some leather to follow along. You’ll need to get a square foot of leather. There are loads of sellers on eBay selling all kinds of leather. You will want a stiff cow hide for this. Latigo is great because it’s been stiffened and colored. It’s also very expensive. You can get away with buying cheaper leather in the 5 to 7 oz range, mine was 4 oz and pretty stiff. If you get thinner or softer leather you’ll need to back it and we’ll discuss that in my show. Goat hide is also stiff enough to use for this project though usually pretty thin. Pick a color of leather you like and realize that its color will change over time- both as it ages but also from you handling it. However if you buy a tan color or even a chocolate brown color and you find you don’t like it when it arrives, don’t fret, you can change the color easily with acrylic paint.</p>
<p>Sheep hide is super soft and really nice to hold, but it’s not stiff at all and you will have to back it to make this cover usable. The same goes for deer hide, lovely stuff but again you’ll need to back it.</p>
<p>By backing the leather I mean that you’ll need to glue a sheet of paper or fabric to the back side of the leather. The glue and paper/fabric will stiffen the leather enough that you create a usable cover.</p>
<p>If someone is selling a “split” it is suede. Again, lovely stuff but not suitable for this project, not to mention that suede is a beast to work.</p>
<p>The first cover I cut was about a half inch too short, so I made myself another. I’ve got to say for a project that comes together in about 20 minutes start to finish that it’s really quite presentable and useful. My little notebooks get knocked around in my bag all day long and frankly I can see that this is protecting them. Having the 3 notebooks inside gives it some weight but also adds additional stiffness to the whole package. I could if I wanted to fold the pages over and write in it in my hand. The 6×9 size would be a little awkward but still easily done.</p>
<p>With the elastics properly tightened I can write on both pages, both sides without issue when sitting at my desk. It’s comfortable and the margin doesn’t get in the way. Even if the fold did get in the way I’d easily be able to remove the current notebook and write.</p>

Directive Journaling: Art Habit

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The first class in the Art Habit program will be focused around journaling, written as well as art journaling. Most of you know I’m an avid journaler and have been since I received my first diary at age 10. I’ve written almost every day since then. (We won’t talk about college, m’kay?) I think that written journaling goes hand in hand with art journaling. When you can’t find the words art helps and when you can’t find the right shape or color writing helps. So this class is more of a self paced workshop, set 4 weeks long, featuring 4 mid-sized PDF of prompts, questions and text. The goal is to take the PDF, read it, mull it over and start to use it as a guide for directed journaling.

What I mean by directed journaling is when you focus on one particular word, or question while you write or make art; or you ask yourself a series of questions as you write or create art. Some of the questions are designed to get you thinking about the world around you others are designed to make you look within yourself.

This may look like the easiest art journaling course created but it’s probably the most difficult I’ve written. The questions are hard, they make you think and explore your thoughts and feelings on a subject.

These are questions that I use in my written journaling on a daily basis. This course comes from YEARS of journaling.

I have not decided if I’m going to do a video component to the class or not. We’ll see.

I’m very excited about this particular workshop and its implications for each person’s journaling. I know that when I use these directive questions my journaling becomes much more productive and useful.

Like I said, I’m very very excited.

Burning the Candle from the Middle Out

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It’s been an interesting few days. I’ve decided I have to pare down my commitments because frankly one cannot burn the candle at both ends and not expect to burn out. I’m up to my ears in stuff to do and only enough time to complete perhaps up to waist height. It’s frustrating to realize that I CAN’T do everything I want to do and that I #1 must find a pace for it and #2 prioritize so that I can #3 get it all done.  Essentially what I’m doing is spreading out all the things I WANT to do across time. It’s not so much  paring down as a spreading out.

So that being said (written) last night I wrote down all my current commitments and prioritized them, in order of NEED and WANT to get done. As I thought about each item, some moved closer to the top of my list, hello I want/need to do a few journal flip throughs and get them up on YouTube.  But my top 3 commitments that never wavered were as follows: #1 Art Show stuff (get those essays in!) #2 Classes #3 Zine/Aj Ning. Everything else comes slightly behind.

In terms of classes, I have a few announcements. First I’m developing a Old Skool Art: Acrylics 101 class. This is designed to be for art journalers who have never painted before, we’ll talk about paint, mediums, brushes and using acrylic in your art journal and with mixed media. It will be a 6 week class (instead of 8) because I found that after the 4 week mark people were less engaged. So I’ll pack 8 to 10 weeks of solid art instruction into 6 weeks of class. This means longer PDF and going from 1 hour long live classes to 1.5 hour long classes. In all you’ll be getting more bang for your buck and in a more streamlined format. It’s a win all around. This class will rock. I’ve already got the course outline done, materials list and 90% of the class written (longhand) and simply need to type up the many pages of writing. I’m looking at starting registration in February and then starting class in March.

Second on the classes front is a self study program. I’ve decided to open up OSA: Drawing to self study. This means that I’ll open up enrollment for the class and allow people in again. This will start sometimes this month, it would make a fantastic Christmas Gift for yourself; or a great way to ring in the New Year.

Third and finally for this post, I feel that the Old Skool Art series doesn’t encompasss everything I want to do with my classes. It doesn’t leave room for much to do with art journaling, given that it’s all about the basics and learning how to use particular materials. You know what I mean? So I’m developing a series of classes that are all about art journaling and keeping and making an art habit. And I’m calling it that, Art Habit. I’ve got a whole series of writing to go along with this, I may do a book or PDF download of the writing. Anyway Art Habit will be a publication of some nature as well as a related series of art classes centered around art journaling and keeping an art habit alive.

So my next post will deal with my OTHER 9 billion commitments.

 

Quick Update

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It’s been a long week for me. The holidays always represent an increase in DayJob related work. It’s just how it is. I’ve grown accustomed to this shift but it’s hard to explain to those around me. That being said some things have been really cool.

#1.) We released a holiday issue of the eZine which you can find here.

#2.) I had my first in person live class in years and it went well.

#3.) And I’m developing 2 new classes; one based around prompts and one around painting.

#4.) I have an art show coming up. (see the post about it here)

I have more to say but right now I'm dead tired and need to catch some Z's. Also for those of you who are wondering, we have been having hellish issues with our internet service since the DNS went down at comcast. We've rebooted the modem, the computers, chatted with comcast and flushed the DNS on our modem, stopped and dumped it and restarted it. For awhile the internet will run smoothly, then 15 minutes later crap. So we're looking into other service providers and we'll see how that works out for us. While chatting with comcast the agent who was supposed to be helping me with my issue instead told me that my service package sucked and that I should upgrade. BEFORE MY ISSUE WAS RESOLVED. How about you help me fix my issue before you try and upsell? Anyway, I'm unhappy, my internet is not happy and hopefully high speed will be fixed by sometime in the middle of next week.

First Live IN Person Class in Years

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I leave for work in about a half hour. I’m stuck in a daylong meeting which will be an overview of stuff I already know. They may reveal some brand new stuff, who knows, I could learn something. I plan on taking notes, and lots of them. I’ve filled my Pelikan Go! pen with Noodler’s bulletproof black, my Platinum Preppy Highlighter with Noodler’s Firefly, and my Pelikano remains inked with the supplied cartridge. I’m quite looking forward to using the Go! as it’s easy to write with, lays down a heavy line of ink and I’m pretty proud of the repair work I did on it this weekend.

During this meeting I’ll break up the boredom with a fantastic (hopefully) bookbinding demonstration. I’m showing off some books I’ve made over the years, talking about how long I’ve been making books and then leading the group in making 2 styles of books- pamphlet and figure-8 stitch. These are 2 easy stitches that beginners can have success with so I’m sticking with those styles.

I’m a little nervous about speaking in front of 50 of my coworkers but it will be good experience for when I go back to teaching live classes. Hopefully my coworkers learn more from me than I will in the 9 to 5 meeting.