MIllande does some very very good texture and printmaking stuff in her art journal series on youtube, her stuff is very informative, not cutesy nor pandering. I love it.
Sketchbuch hits it out of the park again, with these little business card drawings, they are very cool, esp when you consider the size!
I love everything Mattias Adolfsson does on flickr. Everything is just slightly outlandish and yet ever so believable. I'd love to spend 20 minutes rooting around in his brain just to see whats really going on in there.
Probably my favorite technique is to write on a page with sharpie, it can either be previously gesso coated, acrylic painted or raw paper. It doesn't matter. After that you go over the sharpie wriitng with gesso. As the gesso dries part of the sharpie writen text is visible through the gesso. It lifts into teh gesso and is slightly purple. It works with red sharpie as well, and several other colors that I've tried. It works with the liquitex gesso I use as well as the clear. Sharpie will also lift into heavy body acrylic paint. You can then write over the gesso or treat just link a gesso coated page. I like to then add more layers over the top of the writing.
Here I used a page I had coated in liquid acrylic and gesso and stamped some random round shaped onto. I wrote ontop of that with a standard fine tip sharpie.
This is still partially wet, as the gesso dries more the purple will lift into it more. I was too impatient to take a pic of it fully dry. I ended up adding more to the image before I could ge another pic.
Seriously, everywhere. Look at your morning coffee, your egg mcmuffin, the trash on the ground, dirty dishes, your pen/pencil/brush, your hand, alarm clock, lamp,air conditioner, car/truck, train, train pass, dollar bill, debit card, credit card, the internet, the TV, cat, ferret, dog, a tree,a park, a movie, your family, homeless dude sitting next to you on the bus, the newspaper,a magazine, office, your job, your home, birth control or lack of it, your best friend, your most hated enemy, your ex, a funny website, youtube, your mom, air filters, dust, dust bunnies, a spider, a mouse, the vacuum an etc…
In short anything can inspire you to write/draw/paint in your art journal. Where do you let it take you? That's what matters.
I don't but what I hate is trying to find unique gifts for my family for Christmas. My family is notoriously hard to buy for and this year I'm taking the handmade plunge and going all out and getting only handmade Christmas gifts for some of the hardest to buy for people on the planet.
I got out of my Mom's birthday easy with some handmade beads for her troll bracelet. For Dad's birthday we got out of it easy with a thick book on drying foods. (He's a farmer) Last Christmas I scored with a reusable shopping bag full of thrift store wool sweaters and a vintage polish coffee percolator. The middle brother got something I don't remember and I copped out and got my youngest brother a…. gift card. I hang my head in shame with that one.
So this Christmas I'm going handmade. But what to get. For my Mom I'll probably get her something again for her bracelet- there are a lot of artists selling really cool lamp work beads for troll bracelets.
I'm not sure what to get Dad or Matt. Allen, well, I'll look for something World of Warcraft related or iPod touch and that will be easy.
I have to start early or I"m left scrambling around in the last week looking like a moron at the mall nearby wandering the aisles with all the men who waited until the last minute. My goal is to buy everything handmade this holiday season!
What speaks to you? Crfayons? If so use them. Do you only like to write in blue, purple or green? That's okay too.
Do you like:
Sharpies?
Caran d'ache?
Charcoal?
Acrylic?
Watercolors?
Colored Pencils?
Collage?
Gouache?
Ink?
Rubber stamps?
Pastel?
Watercolor Pencils?
If so use them.
Do you hate any of the above? Then don't use it.
Do you like to use more than one? Use whatever you like. Mix 'em up.
Use what you like there is no one (but you) to stop you!
I really really love Susan Cornelis’s work. She does some images of chickens that I simply adore, but I”m also a fan of her collages and sumi ink drawings/ paintings that she calls Soul Collages. It looks to be something of an automitic drawing process that involves sumi ink poured onto a wet page, manipulated with various tools and then collaged on with color added. It would be a great way to work out ideas, get inspiration and to work yourself out of a rut. This could easily be adapted to working in a spread of a journal- smooshing pages together to manipulate the ink. Reminds me of a rorshack test.
Even if all you do is go through your journal and randomly color pages, or doodle borders or even just scribble do something related to art every day. It can take 5 to 10 minutes but you should do something everyday. It's part of the process. Process is the most important part of art journaling. Once art journaling is part of your everyday habit you won't want to leave it behind.
Everybody wants to sell you something. You need 3 things to art journal:
It's that simple. You don't need every product ever made, though they are fun. Some of the most beautiful journals I"ve seen are black and white or made with a ink and one other media. If you like color all you need is something simple, marker,watercolor, crayons, you name it and you can add color. You don't neede every rubber stamp, ink pad, re-inker, paint or marker ever made. Pick a few and go with them.
There are free tutorials online. There is nothing wrong with paying for a tutorial, hell classes are fun. But you don't need to know how to make a page just like someone else to make a great journal. All you need is you, a journal and something to make marks with. Anything else is optional.