Category Archives: Inspiration

It’s a Process

I’ve
been sick, in more ways than one. I’ve had a sinus infection. It’s
knocked me on my ass. I’ve also been dealing with disappointment. Abject
utter disappointment. Disappointment so deep it hurts. I let myself
wallow in it and be consumed with the feeling. The feeling making my
sinus infection seem a hundred times worse than perhaps it was. Or maybe
it was just that bad* that it could make me feel so helpless.

The
cause of the disappointment is not important other than to me. I’ve
spent the last few days in a fever induced haze of misery, scribbling in
my art journal and watching TV on my laptop and sleeping.
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My
scrawling and scribbling in my art journal don’t reveal much to me. It
chronicles my self-centered misery, my sadness and my sneezes.**
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Except
one page, a meditative page I did in a sort of mandala style. It’s also
self centered, in that there is an image of me in the middle of the
page. Radiating out from the center of the image (at the sinuses
interestingly enough) are layers of circles filled with various
patterns, alternating colors, lines, rays, circles, sheep, and gears.
All of this done on a hot colored background in cool colors.
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Though
I had not planned the imagery it matches the evolution of my thoughts
over the last few days, from useless rage and helplessness to being able
to think clearly on the problem at hand and coming up with a plan that
may work. It’s not done yet, but I like where it’s going
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PostSecret at Endicott College

If
you’ve followed me on twitter or facebook for any amount of time you
know I’m a huge PostSecret.com fan. I’ve been watching the site for
years now. I’ve watched it grow from something small to being a huge
hit. If you aren’t familiar with the site, Frank invites you to send a
postcard containing your secret to him completely anonymously. I’ve seen
a great many secrets that resonate with me, and perhaps that’s why I
continue to go to the site every Monday to see the Sunday secrets. Maybe
it’s because I’ve got a few secrets of my own, or maybe I find it to be
a deeply interesting idea. Whatever it is, you should check out the
site, and maybe send your secret into Frank.

I've been waiting for years to see Frank speak somewhere near me. I've missed him a couple of time in Boston and once in another city nearby. When I saw he was going to be at a college in my city, I jumped on the opportunity. I dragged C along for the ride.

If you get a
chance go see Frank speak, I strongly urge you to go. It’s worth your time to hear his beautiful
words, the words of the people there and the images he shares. Take
someone you love, it could change their life, or yours.

(I was only allowed to take pics for the first 5 minutes of the event, after that no photos were allowed.)
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Art Days

Jane
and I decided to do an arty day where we got together at Jane’s house
and we both brought some materials the other hadn’t ever used. This way
we got to test drive materials in our art journals so we’d get an
informed opinion on them before going out and spending a bunch of money
on them. It also gave us a field trip with our JF365 journals.
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I
was able to test out a whole slew of colored pencils and water soluble
colored pencils. I’ll be doing reviews on everything I tested out over
the next few weeks. The pencils I tested out include Koh-i-nor
Progresso, Faber-Castell Polychrome, Derwent Inktense, Derwent Aquatone,
among several others. We had several full hours of chit chat and art
making.
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If you have
an arty friend near to you, I definitely suggest scheduling a day of
art material testing and art! It was a ton of fun!

Toner Transfer Journal Junky Style

The Journal Junkies use toner transfers in their journals. I'm always jealous of well done toner transfers, as mine have almost always failed. Goof off is the first product I've used that gives great results. Watch the video, and work in a well ventilated area away from flames.

 

Drawing People

I’ve
started to work through the Drawing Tutorials Online figure drawing
from memory instruction series. You can get it by signing up for his
newsletter here
.

I
took figure drawing in college and then took a continuing education
credit at the School of the Museum years later. I haven't done figure
drawing in years. I’m trying to work with some friends to get another
friend to pose for us. Since I don’t want to be too rusty when I go into
the session I decided I’d brush up on my skills with the DTO lessons.

As
with my college classes the first DTO lesson is about gesture drawings
and working with a simple skeletal figure. I’m very familiar with this
lesson. It was what we spent the first week of our figure drawing
classes doing. Short 30 second poses. It is a great way to warm up.
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I
decided to work with my yellow brush pen and a blue brush pen. In
college I used to do my figure drawing with yellow, orange, red, and
dark blue colored pencils working in layers. This method works well for
me. When I took the class after college the professor complained that I
chose difficult materials since I brought watercolors and a long liner
brush. 🙂
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Anyway,
since I don’t have anyone to pose for me I went online and found a few
websites with free images to draw from. The best was this one. Caution
it is NSFW EVER. I mean never ever. Lots and lots of n@ked people. I did
20 quick gesture skeleton drawings. And by quick I mean quick, spending
no more than a minute or 2 each. I also worked in a dirt cheap
sketchbook.
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It
was a good challenge and by the end of the 30 minutes I spent sketching
I really wanted to flesh out the images and create a finished drawing.
Alas that was not the goal for tonight, tonight was about looking and
recording quickly and with simple methods. It was about getting the
eye’s and hands attuned to the figure. It was learning to see.

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