I'm headed out with my friend Jane to sketch. Hopefully the weather holds out for us.
What are you doing today?
What are you doing today?
1 Reply
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Corrugated Cardboard Book
About a week ago my coworker gave me some large sheets of cardboard. I often use them at work for making posters. Sometimes I take the sheets home and draw and sketch on them. This time I chopped them into 8×11 sized sheets and decided to make a book. I’ve wanted to practice some of the structures from Keith A. Smith’s book “Smith’s Sewing Single Sheets” for awhile. This is the second book I’ve made from this book, and once I figured out the structure and the stitching it’s about as difficult as any 2 needle Coptic stitch.
There are some areas where I need to work on my stitching but over all this is definitely a book structure I will make again.
For the cover I managed to find some honeycomb corrugated cardboard, I sanded the images off and then applied several layers of gesso to build texture. I then rubbed in some black gesso, several layers of asphaltum colored Golden glaze and then added a little unbleached titanium. I finished it off by added a heavy layer of satin varnish and then buffed that with bee’s wax. The pictures do not do this justice. There is a lot more depth to the color than shows in these pics.
Each of the leaves has 2 layers of gesso on one side.
I’ll be honest; I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this book. The little issues with the stitching mean that I can’t (won’t) sell it but I think it’s such a cool structure that I want to do something with it. Part of making this was to make it prove to myself that I could do it.
Friday Flickr Find: Laura Serra
Yes, I know this is not so much flickr find as a flickr favorite. I seem to be returning to new work of people in my flickr contacts list. Still her stuff is amazing!
Gear Shift
Sometimes it's good to break up the usual with something unusual. Some of you may know that I dabble with creating my own messenger bags from recycled materials. A few months back I made my own messenger bag by chopping up an piecing together tyvek mailers from fedex and the USPS. It came out fab, soft and sturdy. It's showing a few signs of wear but over all as a proof of concept it's worked brilliantly.
I learned a lot from that bag, and I'm applying that to another recycled idea- you kn ow those recycled reusable grocery bags? Those are a great sturdy fabric. We had a bunch that were chopped up to make a display and a few more that were returned for recycling (they can go into plastic bottle recycling!) and I realized they would make fantastic fabric. So I brought them home and chopped the bags into 2 inch strips aand then stitched and top stiched those into 14 inch wide by 24 inch panels. I purposefuly went with 2 inch strips rather than 4 or 6 so that all logos and words would be unrecognizable.
I'm still working out in my head how I want this bag to be, I know I need some internal pockets, because summer is coming fast and I won't wear a jacket, so I need places to stow my phone and keys.
Here's a spectacularly crappy photo of the panels:
As you can see it's pretty bright, which is drastically different from my Fedex bag, which is mostly white and very understated. I htink I'm going to need to do edging on this, so I might head to Joann's this weekend with my Mom to see what kind of edging they have. I'm also going to need sturdier pins, I've bent a bunch on this stuff! It's much tougher than the tyvek.
Drawing-a-Day: Weekly recap
I decided that after week 2's disasterous results of, well, not getting a lot done along with allergy attack I needed to regroup and rethink the drawing-a-day thing. (Traci was right when she said the upload was the longest part of it.) My initial decision to NOT tweet process pictures really threw me for a loop. Tweeting, facebooking and flickring process shots really makes my drawing time more interesting. Drawing is interesting with out the progress shots but… I like progress shots. So I'll be putting those back into my "process." I'm also taking the size requirement out.
Initially I focused on making the drawings in my Graf it pad, which was all well and good, but for the fact that sometimes I want to draw on my lunch break and I don't take the graf it pad with me. Maybe I should just suck it up and BRING it with me. Instead I chose to change my "rules" to conform to how I actually work, and that is that the drawing-a-day can be in any format, ie in my webbie if I chose, or the graf it pad, or anything else.
So, there's that, and here are some of my drawings from this past week:
Friday Flickr Finds: Pete Scully
I've shown this guy's work before but it's good enough to share again, and again!
Little, Yellow, Different
Drawing People is Good
On Sunday my friend Jane and I got together with my friend Jasmine for a little drawing session. A little back story here. Jasmine and I are coworkers and she facebooked that she wanted to wear 40’s era “city lady” clothing all the time. I commented she should turn it into an art project with photographs, taken out of time and place. Then I suggested she model for my friends and I in her clothing as a way to raise funds. We had to cancel once and I thought that the drawing session wasn’t going to happen.
This Sunday it happened. She showed up after getting lost and got dressed into her fab black dress. (I should have taken pictures of it.) We did some short poses of the her in the clothing and then she switched outfits and we did some longer poses.
It was a great way to help her raise some funds, granted I hope that if we do this again we get a full house and she’s able to really add a lot more to her collection of fantastic 40’s era clothing.
Take a look at my quick watercolors, I did a quick 10 minute pencil sketch and then added some watercolors to block out the shading. Sometimes adding a time restraint can be freeing.
Also, I'm counting this as my drawing-a-day post for sunday and today.
thoughts on drawing-a-day
I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to continue with the drawing-a-day project. I’m devoted to it, but there are some days when I am simply not going to be able to do a drawing. I get stuck in traffic, or have a ton of errands; you know regular life stuff that gets in the way of good times. I’m thinking of how I can continue with the drawing-a-day but with a few built in excuses.
I made it through week 1, but barely. I made it 10 days and then my allergy meds kicked my butt (got to love spring) and then last night I cooked dinner and fell asleep.
I think that on those days I can’t do the drawing-a-day I won’t stress over it. You know, life gets in the way. Until I’m doing art every day for a living I have to be aware that I can’t do it all. Even if I want to.
Today I'm making more books with fresh "new" recycled covers for my artifre shop, I've got a sale going on, check it out
BarnBurner sale
I'm doing a sale for my artfire shop. Get 10% off of anything in the shop, your whole order, once, by using the coupon code "barnburner" from 4/15- 4/30/2011.
read the rest of the story:
I posted a few days back I posted this pic:
That was my "studio camera." The one I used for product shots for my artfire shop. I left it on my tripod awhile back and it got knocked over (I'll blame the dogs.) When it fell, twice, it landed on it's lens. This knocked the lens off it rails, and though it was a mid level camera, I was told repeatedly it was more expensive to fix than it was worth. Sigh. So I decided to take it apart and see if the dead camera that would no longer focus could be fixed. Yeah, by me, don't think I'm insane. I figured better than nothing. And, oh baby, let me tell you something, it was a done deal as soon as I cracked that baby open, that thing wasn't being fixed. So anyway, that brings me to today and I need a new camera and well, the money I was saving for a new camera (or laptop) had to be spent on car repairs.
That leaves me with a shiny car but a dying laptop and a point and shoot that seems like it can't do he job for what I need it to do, ie large enough files for zazzle and redbubble. My scanner can handle the drawing-a-day stuff, but not the watercolors for the face experiment.
So I'm doing a sale for my artfire shop. Get 10% off of anything in the shop, your whole order, once, by using the coupon code "barnburner" from 4/15- 4/30/2011