One of the problems that I have with working on art so much is that I really want to keep my momentum going for days on end. The DayJob often leaves me beyond tired at the end of the day and the last thing I want to do when exhausted is pick up a brush and start my second 40 hour work week. I’ve been putting in 12 hour days on the weekends and 2 and 3 hours after my DayJob nearly everyday.

Some days I want o paint late into the day. I can do that a few times here and there but really I need to stop and sleep at some point.

I have a painting on the easel and another at the ready. I’ve got the first layers applied and I really want to wait for the first layer to film over and then get tht second layer of paint on but I have to go to work in the AM.

I look forward to the day when I can work on art as my DayJob.

For those who have been wondering about the top secret project and what it entailed, I’m telling you right now it’s a 41 page zine available for download. Check out the main page of AJ Ning for details on how to purchase the zine.

The zine features articles by myself Leslie Herger of Comfortable Shoes Studio, Connie Hozvicka of Dirty FootPrints Studio, Eveline of EvelineTimeless, Klair Scattergood of Rhomany’s Realm and Jonathan Manning of The Artistic Biker. There is a spectacular interview with Teesha Moore included, stories of how we got our strart. It’s not just another zine on how to art journal but a zine on our beginnings and, yeah, how to art journal.

I can’t tell you how excited I was to see its finished pages on my screen and to hit the print button, 41 pages of art journaling goodness from real people making real art journals. The best part, to me, is that every single person participating in this zine has a drastically different style so you’re getting articles from all over the map, and that’s great to me!

So head over to AJ Ning and check out the zine! We’ll have a sample set of pages up soon so check back often!!!

On another note, for those of you who have been reading my blog know tht I’m a big supporter of arts in rural communities. Though I live in the city today I grew up ina very rural part of Maine. So when Jonathan Manning aka The Artistic Biker decided to purchase a building in Chickasha, Oklahoma and turn it into a studio and gallery I knew I wanted to help. Over the course of several weeks of UStreams I painted a picture about overcoming obstacles and doing anything, I’ve titled it “I Can Do Anything.” I’m auctioning it off and 50% of the profits will go directly to Jonathan to help him renovate the building. I’m excited to see where the eBay auction goes and how much money we can make to support Oasis Studio and Gallery. So head over to eBay and bid!

I’ve been devoting a lot of my time to painting lately. Both en plein air and finished works, not to mention my weight weenie walks. Skipped the other day due to hellish allergy induced sinus pressure. As I’ve done that my art journaling is not totally going to the way side but it has changed and adapted itself to my current needs. It’s smaller lighterweight and going back to my roots of art journaling- ink and watercolor. It’s simple, fast and efficient. My ideas are simply drawn and then colored in. My words are scrawled across the page and are equally as simple as the pages themselves.

My current art journal is a small 4×6 inch spiral bound Strathmore 400 series drawing  sketchbook. It’s a size and format I used to work in ALL THE TIME. IN fact in 2002 I did a whole series of small ink studies of local (at the time) Washington county areas*. The bridge in East Machias, scenes from the East Machias Grist Mill park, drawing from Bad Little Falls Park in Machias, among a whole series of others. These were sold on eBay for various inexpensive prices, ranging from $2 to $10. Hey, I had bills to pay.  Those little drawings, plus many larger went all over the world to people who had visited the area on vacation.

Though I loathe spiral bound sketchbooks and journals, this will do for now, I had it in the studio, unfinished and it begged me to fill it. I’m going to go through my various sketchbooks and see which beg me to fill them and see if I can.

I have to admit working the Cloud studies has made me prodigious in my work. I’m filling sketchbooks left and right and looking forward to the next, I need to go back and look for some that need filling, or have little in them so far. I’ve already pillaged a couple for their fabriano paper pages. I am not ashamed to admit I tore the pages out of the journal to paint cloud studies on them.  The binding was completely ruined when I removed the pages. I rather regret that as it was a fine book and once from early in my career in bookbinding. The binding itself hangs loose from the cover. Perhaps in my next Ustream I’ll show you the damage and the reason I don’t like tear pages from finished sketchbooks. I’ve done it, and sold the art, but you have to be careful to not ruin the binding.

Anyway here’s an art journal page for you to look at.

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Done in brush pen with black ink on white paper. I quite enjoy these sketches.

So the cloudservation is going well. I'm very happy with the progress I've made. The camera and light tonight really intensified the yellows in the cloud, you'll have to take my word for it that it's much more muted in person than the camera shows them to me.

I may add another layer of transparent white to the clouds, but I"m happy with the blues so far.

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Rice Freeman-Zachary wrote a post here about “wild messy creatives.” I felt she’d hit the nail on the head. You don’t have to be wild and messy to be creative. Quite the opposite, you can be a neat and tidy creative. In fact, other than the disaster that my studio tends to accumulate, and it is accumulation as it’s a bit of a dumping ground and storage facility. I usually work in our office. My work area has an assortment of piles of stuff but my easel, brushes and actual WORK area is not wild and mess. It’s not neat and tidy but I’m finding that the neater it is the easier it is to work. Later this week my plan is to go down into my actual studio and finish the job I started in July and finish the organization I started.

Then I have to wonder about the wild aspect of her post. I have never worn a tutu, nor do I ever plan to. I *HAVE* streaked campus when I was 19 and drunk on vodka with a friend. I *have* woken up in strange places, where it takes a second or 2 to figure out where the hell I was. I’ve ridden a mountain bike down steep inclines. I’ve ridden ATVs at breakneck speeds through the woods. I’ve driven 125mph on the highway and buried the needle on twisting backwoods country roads. I’ve done some stupid shit but I’d never take it back or ask for a do over, okay, well maybe my Krazy Ex and that stupid marine* I dated in college, but frankly all those wild good times I’ve had have shaped who I am today. I won’t apologize for that and to those I’ve owed an apology to, I’ve found them and said I’m sorry, and in some cases it took 11 years but I did it. (J, I’m lookin’ at you.) You know what, without the Krazy Ex in there I’d still be a flirtatious** jerk, so no I won’t take that back, heartbreak is a cure for some things and it certainly cured my tendency to be a douchebag.

Those years when I was a jackass were some of the most artistically frustrating of my life. Moving around a lot doesn’t allow for creativity, at least not for me. Living in a crummy room in the ghetto is not artistically enlightening. Working a shitty job trying to pay my bills caused me stress and stress kills my creativity. I remember restless nights spent staring at paper, creating boring tired art, lame shit I’d never show to anyone.

The only thing those crazy post college times gave me was my first art journal. The angsty grist of my life recorded, my heartbreak scrawled with ball point on dismal paper and the detritus of my life taped, glue sticked and rubber cemented to the pages. The work is neither inspired nor is it very good, but it’s the crap that came from that life. Creating that kind of stuff is what progressed me into creating art in a journal format. Someday I’ll show you those first journals that combined the art and life but for now, the memories are still close and painful and thus better in the journal tied shut.

Now that I’m older and settled down and more at peace with WHO I really am I am the most creative I have ever been. I look at my old life and wish I’d found this calm sooner. I know that without that wild kid I was I’d not be who I am today. It shaped me, occasionally you see that wild streak but mostly I’m boring, rock solid, stable Less.

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Dark and light
Originally uploaded by lessherger

One of my cloud studies. This one painted on my back porch in Beverly, MA. I'm working simply here, just a few colors of paint, a couple of layers, the clouds don't give me time to do much before they are gone. All my cloud studies are available on my artfire page here

It’s been a long hard working weekend. I can say though, with 100% certainty that it was well worth it. In an off the cuff moment I offered to donate three 16×20 canvases to an Aunt-in-laws fundraiser for her cancer treatment. I could get on a soapbox about how the political parties’ bipartisan politic ruined healthcare reform and due to that the Auntie has to rely on the kindness of friends, family and strangers to raise the funds to pay for her most recent round of cancer treatments. Having seen my grandfather go through similar courses of mind bogglingly expensive treatments and eventually having no choice but to die in a hospital when what he’d wanted was to die peacefully at home, but his HMO didn’t cover the care in his rural area.

It sucks.

So I ran out purchased 4 (hey bogo sale at the art supply, why not) 16×20 canvases and started painting. I’m using my cloudservation sketches as a basis for these 3 paintings as well as a few other paintings. I’m really enjoying working at the larger scale. It’s rather freeing and liberating in a way the smaller work isn’t. The small cloud studies are also very freeing but it’s their speed of capture that makes them so.

I’m currently looking for places to show my work. I’ve got a list of 7 places in the area to contact but I’m willing to drive for a bit to get my work hung. Got ideas? Leave a comment or email me, my address is on the left somewhere.

I’m calling it quits for the evening with all the paintings I’ve been working on, it’s time for bed. Here’s a quick snap of the cloudservation I’m donating for the fundraiser (if they accept it) I suspect I’ve got 2 or 3 more layers of paint to apply. Definitely more zinc white and a few touches of cad yellow light. Right now I’m happy with the progress I’ve made on it so far.

A lot of work goesinto these clooudservations as they require the previous layers of paint to dry to get the effects I'm seeking. I started off with 2 shades of cad yellow- light and medium. This went on the cloud portions that will layer be mostly white. After those had throughly dried I added the blues and purples with a substantial amount of titanium white. I let that dry and started to add the areas of white in the white cloud parts. So far I've added one layer of zinc (aka mixing) white and will add a bunch more and alter the blues a tad.

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Sky Study Early AM 2
Originally uploaded by lessherger

One of my early cloud studies. This one painted on my back porch in Beverly, MA. I'm working simply here, just a few colors of paint, a couple of layers, the clouds don't give me time to do much before they are gone. All my cloud studies are available on my artfire page here SOLD