Every now and then I get a series of questions on Youtube and Facebook that warrant longer explanations via video. Here are the latest batch. Feel free to ask more art and art journal related questions in the comments.

Well both Tammy of DaisyYellow and Wendy of LateStartStudio have nominated me for the Versitile Blogger Award. *blush*

So, in no particular order, here are my 15 picks:

• Diana Trout– For her no nonsense and down to earth approach to art journaling, refreshing!
• The Journal Junkies– These guys are up my alley with an approach to art journaling that is fresh and process based.
• Millande– Her videos are lovely and inspiring, check out her seed journal series WOW!
• Traci Bunkers– I love what she does with tradiational photography and with paint, great stuff.
• Jazmin- Sirensidyll I adore what she does in her journals and her approach.
• Tammy of DaisyYellow– Rules smules, I read her daily
• Sketchings & Jottings– Not just one artists work but a collection of great stuff all over the net.
• Doodler's Anonymous– Great inspiration on an irregular basis.
• Sketchbob– Highly creative, his journals inspire me.
• JournalArtista– Paula is amazing and motivating.
• RightBrainPLanner-Follow her on INstagram for some photo goodness
• NoPenIntended– This feeds my addiction love of pens.
• ArtJournaling.ning.com I love to head over and check out all the stuff people add on a daily basis
• CraftyMoira– Moira is a great teacher, writter and full of inspiration, I lvoe her daily face drawings she's been doing.
• Chongolio– Great guy with great advice for art journalers, very inspirational YT videos.

Now 7 things about me:

• I'm from Maine, I grew up on the coast about an hour and a half from Canada.
• I've never been  lobster fishing, though I have been on a friend's lobster boat. I also fell off his boat, at the dock, mainly because a friend pushed me off the boat. I feel into the bait grease slick. In case you don't know, lobster bait is rotting fish.
• I'm an adventurous eater but I used to be vegetarian. My college roommate are still shocked when they hear me talk about cooking meat of any kind.
• I'm an accomplished cook, who enjoys complicated recipes.
• I started blogging in 2000. My first blog was done anonymously and thankfully the server it was housed on had a catastrophic failure and burnt to a crisp.
• I have horrible allergies to pollen and dust.
• I've been making art since I could hold a crayon.

Check out Jasmin and Traci's posts.

I use the cameras to capture the things I see that spark my imagination or creativity. When I see something that captures my eye, I whip the iPoo out and snap a picture. In the summer I take a long walk with the intent to capture my surroundings. I use each of the cameras with a different purpose in mind. Mostly though I shoot pictures for the fun of it, I don’t know if they will end up in a journal or in a blog post.

With my iPoo I use several apps they are as follows: Hipstamatic, Instagram and Camera+. I use Camera+ and Hipstamatic most often. I enjoy the randomness of Hipstamatic and conversely, the control Camera+ gives me. I’ve been giving myself a little challenge using Hipstamatic which you can read about here. Most of the challenge is teaching myself to see for the camera and through the camera. I’m shooting the same subject 5 days a week and it’s a challenge to make the image new and interesting without relying on the app to do it for me.

With my PEN2 and point and shoot I transfer images to my computer using Picasa. I also use Picasa for minor edits- color correction, contrast, and switching the image to black and white if I’m looking for that. Most of the images I take with these 2 cameras are used pretty much straight out of the camera or switched to black and white. I don’t change much with them. Normally I up the contrast and increase the saturation of the images. If I need to do anything more intense, I use GIMP, which is a freeware Photoshop knock off.

Ultimately with the PEN2 I’m a fan of Straight Out Of the Camera (SOOC) photos. I’ll crop them to size but the ultimate goal is to capture an image with the camera that will look, when printed as I attempted to capture it. For me the PEN2 is for clear contrasty images and the iPoo is for fun artsy images. With the PEN2 I was able to buy an inexpensive adapter (around $20 on eBay) and put vintage lenses on it. I chose Canon lenses because there were a lot on eBay. But I could have gone with vintage Russian lenses or Nikons or even old video lenses. Adapters rock my world and vintage lenses really give the modern camera a whole new feel.

The iPoo is a fixed focus camera, meaning it has one lens and that's it… Except that you can get some great stick on lenses for the iPh0ne and iPoo. These little lenses come with a stick on ring that attaches to the iPoo and the lens then attaches with magnets. These little adapters are a ton of fun. They aren't high quality but they change the focusing ability of the camera. My favorites are the wide angle and the macro lenses.These little add ons can be found on eBay for pennies or you can get one of better quality on PhotoJojo.com. I also have that adapter ring on my cell phone's camera, I refer to my cell phone as the "kinda smart phone."

Ultimately the best camera is the one you'll use.

 Check out Jasmin and Traci's posts.

My Secret Toner Transfer

Sketch from Commons Photos

Another Common's Sketch

Go see Traci and Jazmin's stuff.

Call this a Blog Circle, Jazmin, Traci Bunkers and I decided we’re all write on the same subject this week. Our topic for the week is: Using photography and photos in our art journals.

I’ve been talking to Jazmin aka Sirensidyll about how we both use cameras in our art journals. The more I talked to her the more I realize that my cameras are an integral part of my art journaling process. I have a camera in my bag pretty much everywhere I go. Here’s a brief overview of the cameras I use:
My iPod touch
A Canon Ixus 1100
and a Olympus Pen PL2 with a variety of vintage lenses

In the past, before I got the iPod touch I used my Canon Ixus point and shoot more often than I do now. It was small and I could slip it into my bag and take it anywhere. My Canon P&S takes great clear pictures. Now that I have an iPod touch 4th generation I’ve got a smaller camera I can take anywhere. The photos it takes are not as good as the Canon but it does a pretty good job. Additionally I can download a bunch of cool apps for my iPod that adapt and change the appearance of the image. I take one of these 2 with me everywhere.

In the summer I take my Olympus Pen PL2 with me almost everywhere. I purchased a few vintage lenses and an adapter so that the old manual lenses can be used. The old fashioned and antique lenses lend a different look and coloration than modern lenses. With the vintage or new lenses it takes sharp crisp photos with great color.

I use the iPoo for 90% of my image (not accurate mathmatically.) It’s so small and portable that I forget I’m carrying it. I don’t worry about dropping it, well much, and it doesn’t weight me down. Sure, it doesn’t have fancy lenses but it captures ideas as well as a thumbnail sketch.

Something that is unusual about photography,  at least for me, is that I didn’t start taking pictures until I was in my last year at college. For that last year, I used disposable point and shoot cameras that I took to the local pharmacy for development. It wasn’t until I was 22 that I got my first “real” camera, a Canon ELPH, and it took bright crisp and clear images. I still have that camera, though I never use it. Shortly after that I got my first digital, and HP something or the other, a 1.2 mega pixel brick, and by brick, I mean it was brick sized, shaped and weight. After using that camera to it’s death I graduated to a Canon Digital ELPH and kept it for years.

Wednesday we’ll all talk about what apps and programs we use to manipulate our images. Check out Jazmin and Traci's posts on their blogs.

All images in this blog post were shot with my iPoo touch 4th gen I'll talk about the apps I use in the next post. (I refer to my iP0d as the iPoo to avoid attracting attention from the spam brigade.)

I’m pretty stoked to tell you all about the Challenge! group on AJ Ning. I’ve asked a group of my arty friends to help me out by being Hosts. Each month a new host will introduce the Challenge! Each Challenge! has 3 parts: Images, Colors, and Material. Depending on the host, you might get images they shots, copyright free images from Flickr’s Commons.

The images are meant to give you some inspiration. You don’t have to draw them, or even use them as collage fodder for your journal. You could be inspired by them to write about them, or doodle a new pattern, or even, write about how much you hate them.

The colors again, are meant as inspiration. You can use one or all of them in your art journal. You could do a whole page in one color, or 2 or 3. You could try and mix the colors. There are so many options with color it’s amazing. What about staining paper?

The material challenge is the cult of stuff aspect, use it up! If you have it in your stash, use it up! Test it out, use this Challenge! to try it out in multiple ways, learn how to use that one material in every way possible. Try it, test it!

Each Challenge! will lasts 2 weeks, then the next will start. We get each host for a month!

You don't see all of the stuff in my art journals or sketchbooks. Some of it I keep for me.

It's private.

My every thought does not need to be shared.

Some of the stuff in those pages is dark. Some of the stuff in my head is dark. It's not pretty. It'll never be pretty. I'm not talking about it being grungy and dark so it doesn't fit the rampant aesthetic of pretty in art journals. No. That is not what I mean.

Rage isn't pretty.

Hate isn't pretty.

Confusion isn't pretty.

None of that needs to be pretty when I'm thinking it through. It's not for you.

It was never meant for you.

The beauty of an art journal is that you can close the cover.

Meditate on the rage/hate/confusion and move on with your life.

No one needs to know.

That's okay.

After you spew your issues to the world and the drama queens and gossip vultures strip you bare, leaving your bones to bleach in the sun what do you have?

Your art journal and a heavy heart.

Tell it to the page.