I think that art journals and sketchbooks are nearly synonymous. This video though slow has some great information.
1: Keeping a Sketchbook by Pam Locker from University of Lincoln on Vimeo.
I love the lettering in this moleskine. Love the colors too.
Last week I made an appeal on here for people to head over to my artfire shop. (That appeal still stands BTW) And something happened. You guys, the anonymous readers and not so anonymous readers tweeted my information, facebooked my information and helped spread the word about my shop. Sales are still slow. I'm thinking it's becuase Artfire is a new venue and people don't trust it. It might be my mix of products. Who the hell knows. I don't. But views of my shop skyrocketed. I had over 1200 item views and 2050 studio views. That's huge for me in a weekend. Keep tweeting the stuff you like in my shop.
I also received a donation. It came with a heartfelt note and I'm not ashamed to admit it, I teared up. It means so much to me that someone (I'll keep him anonymous unless he wants to have me write about him) values what I do enough to give me a donation to keep doing what I'm doing. I can't thank you enough. At that person's urging I've put a donations link onto my blog. You can see it at the lower right. I promise when everything becomes profitable again it'll come down.
Do you want to pimp your shop? Post a link in the comments of this post. Seriously. I'll tweet it, I"ll facebook it. I'll write about you. Want a review of your items on here? Send me something. I want to start a weekly post (on wednesdays) of websites, blogs, etsy and artfire shops. You guys helped me pimp my shop and I want to help push yours.*
I'm starting a Ning group. I"ll be doing some classes. Don't worry my YouTube videos will keep coming. I will ALWAYS do free videos on techniques and tips. But like I said in my last post I got bills to pay and I have to make my shop and blog be somewhat profitable so I can keep doing what I love. Otherwise it's a second job for me. But in the Ning group I want it to be a group of people offering classes not just me. Think about it if we all work together to create a super-Ning group where we all have classes it will be awesome. I'm letting this idea ferment and I'm working behind the scenes on some of my ideas for it, but I Want to hear what do YOU want to see in classes from me? In other people? Do you want to teach classes? What classes do you want to teach? Poetry? Writing workshops? Lettering? Bookbinding? Comments
Some of the great things I discovered on vimeo are Danny Gregory’s videos of his journals. Awesome
Sketchbook #3 from DannyGregory on Vimeo.
I've been working on my travel journal for my upcoming (no fun) trip to Maine. I'll be up there for almost 2 weeks. I don't usually take my acrylic paints with me and I know that I'm not going to have the time I often have to work on the pages with watercolors. I like to work on colored pages so I've gone through and I've collaged into the journal random images from Mother Earth News, Wine Enthusiast and some collage papers. I've gesso'd the pages then used thin acrylics to color each page. After that Iused watered down acrylics in 3 colors to tone down and grunge up the pages. I'll be doing a whole video on that soon.
Anyway, here are the videos!
When I finish filling this journal I'll be doing an art journal flip video. I may try to do some process videos too. I'll have my cameras with me when I'm traveling, so we'll see.
Great line drawing of houses. love these complex little images.
I don't pimp my journals here as much as I probably should so I'm going to make a direct appeal to those of you viewing the blog today that you head to my artfire shop and take a look. I've got a variety of handmade journals suitable for just about any media. Take a look and even if you can't purchase something help me out by tweeting or facebooking a few of your favorite items. I need to make some sales to pay for my internet fees. My typepad and domain renewal bills came the other day, and well, the shop hasn't been truly profitable in quite awhile so any help is truly appreciated
This is a great monocromatic image dealing with travel.
Love the idea that this is done on a beer mat.
I have a confession: I'm a bad brush owner. I own 30 or so brushes and about 20 of them are in disrepair. Paint dried to the ferule, paint dried in the bristles, glue dried on them, matted medium used with a good watercolor brush*. I go through phases where I'm working watercolor or gouache exclusively and washing the brush thoroughly after use is not as necessary as it is for acrylic. So I got into the bad habit of allowing my brushes to dry after only rinsing them.
My painting professor would kill me. He allotted time at the end of each class for all of us to clean our brushes. He spent about half a class period teaching us proper brush care. This was a man who took brush cleaning seriously. His motto was that a expensive brush should last you a life time, if you cared for it properly. If he saw the state of my grumbacher brushes, he'd surely give me an F.
Yesterday, while working on a art journal spread I got frustrated, downright pissed off at myself, as I looked through my brushes, saw that I had several hundreds of dollars worth of ruined brushes. None of which I can afford to replace right now. The only brushes I religiously clean as of late are my liner brushes. I can't paint an entire painting in liner brushes… (Or can I?) So I set about to clean them.
I know what your thinking, its acrylic, those brushes are done. Well as a practiced bad brush owner I can tell you that's not true. Many things will soften acrylic paint. My favorite mix is 25% dish soap, 25% green works cleaner (or some other cleaner without ammonia or clorine) and 50% water mixed thoroughly in a salsa jar. I put about an inch of solution i there. Hte percentages don't need to be accurate, just eyeball it.
You then need to secure your brushes so that they brush part is not resting on the bottom of the container and that the ferrule isn't submerged either. It's a delicate balance. I used blu-tac to hold each brush to the jar at just the right height. You can use whatever works best for you.
For brushes that aren't severely caked with paint/ crud you can try rinsing them out in a few hours. Once the dried on paint is soft you can then wash as normal.
Most of my brushes were ready to go in about 2 hours. I had a handful that I had to let sit over night and I've got 3 I'm letting sit for a week.
I've learned my lesson, from now on at teh end of every painting session, no matter how late I'm washing my damn brushes.
*believe me when I saw that it puts he most perfect amount of matte medium down for an image transfer ever!