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Enjoy it While We Can

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Living here in the NorthEast allows for some pretty spectacular events, one of my favorites is the changing of the seasons. Spring brings with it bright greens, cool rains, and a brightening of the sun. Summer brings bountiful flowers, yummy floral smells, and in general some much needed heat. The time period we are currently in, the change from summer to fall is my favorite. The days are still long, the sun still hot, but nights cool and the harvest is soon upon us. This is my favorite time of year. I can switch from t-shirt and shorts to my favorite pants, long sleeve shirts, sweaters, and lightweight jackets. I move from sweating all day to being comfortable. It's a glorious time. Hopefully next year this time of year will also be marked with a personal harvest time. This year's rainy spring led me to no garden and a sad pear tree.

A friend of mine on facebook said it best "better enjoy it while we can." This transitional season lasts but a short time and soon the trees will be bursting with color, the winds will remove the warm mass of air sitting on us, the oceans will cool and we'll be headed into the hard cold days of winter.

So how shall we best enjoy this season? Personally I'm putting on some pants, a wool sweater, packing my sketchbook and watercolor supplies and heading to the beach and downtown area to sip a latte from Atomic and sketch some of the buildings and life of Beverly, MA. If I'm feeling really saucy I'll hop the commuter rail to Salem and head to Derby Square to sketch the old buildings and strange peeps in the area, and grab some great food for lunch. For today I suspect I'll stay local, and venture out on foot.

Blank Books for Journaling

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I've been watching more videos on youtube, looking for stuff to post here and also for inspiration. I've also been looking at photos of art on flickr. One of the things that I've noticed is the overwhelming amount of unique journals people are using. Of course there is the ubiquitous moleskine, one of my former faves. but there are also large quantities of other books being used. There is the reclaimed or re-purposed hardback book in which the artist gessoes the pages and works on a printed page. There are spiral bound books, which I've never been a fan of for art journaling but was for sketching- they lay flat, come in a variety of papers and are easily found. The are also great if you focus on writing in your journal. There are the coptic and long stitch handmade books, I've also noticed  and interesting phenomenon in which people are working on a plain flat page and then punching 3 ring binder holes and binding the pages in big giant 3 ring binders or into scrapbook covers. Whichever style of book you choose there are lots of options out there.

Take for instance, you can get a unique decorated moleskine on artfire for not too much more than you would pay for one at B&N or Borders. These are pre-decorated by an artist in many styles.

To find a reclaimed hardback book one needs only go to the local library and look for a book in the sales pile, ask your librarian for help. Also the Salvation Army and Goodwill have book section which you can go through. My local Saver's store has a section of some cool and wacky books, many of which would make great altered books. Also don't look past some of those "employer schwag books" these are the books that employers give out at interviews and job fairs to try and get people interested in coming to work for them. Some larger companies have some really nice schwag books, perfect for manipulation and editing.

Coptic books are a favorite of mine, They are great for sketching outside becuase the binding easily folds over on itself, they are often hardback, which makes for great sketching support, the binding looks really cool, the thread binding is sturdy. The bast part of all, you can stuff the pages full of extra glued in bits and goodies and the won't stress the spine too badly. A search in artfire brings up pages of great and well made one of a kind unique coptic bound journals. 

The long stitch books are one of my favorites. they come in a variety of leather cover, recycled covers and interesting stitches. They fold over on themselves, can be hardcover or a limp cover, the stitches are visible on the spines and can be very decorative. Best of all they are tough. I've been making and using almost exclusively long stitch bound books for the last 10 years or so and they survive abuse like you wouldn't believe. You  can toss them in the bottom of a bag, stomp on them, spill coffee on them, drop them in a lake and they come out looking pretty good and the binding survives. 

While I'm not a fan of 3 ring binders you might be interested in trying the binder method out. There are some very fun and unique 3 ring binder covers on artfire. I found them by searching for 3ring binder. Very cool. I also found some neat rubber stamps that way.

Whatever you chose try something handmade and unique to get you through this holiday season. By careful Artfire shopping you might find that you make it through spending less than if you bought mass produces crap made overseas.

Zines

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For those of you who remember, back in the day I used to do a few zines*, and I've been thinking of doing another. Some of who who do remember are probably breathing a sigh of relief that I've not finished another zine, those of you who were of my few fan who bought or traded for my zine back-in-the-day are probably frowning right now.

I have ideas, oh man, do I have ideas. But I am having issues committing them to paper. OR I commit them to paper and I immediately decide they are not good enough for print or to go to the effort of scanning and printing, or I tell myself that scanning and resizing them will make them illegible and who wants to read a zine that is written in illegible chicken scratch.** Especially if it's resized and warped chicken scratch. Furthermore the idea of taking the pages that I've been thinking of as for the zine and transcribing them makes my head twitch, really it does.

So I keep thinking in the back of my mind: ZINE ZINE ZINE, I get to a point where its time to work on it and I have all kinds of mental excuses that stop me from actually working on the zine and allow me the excuse of "It won't work." So rather than working on it, I spend my time tweeting, browsing the 'nets and not working on it.

SO As my first step BACK into zine world I'm hoping to scan pages from my art journals. Some will be printed in black and white and others in color, we'll see how that works. I have a feeling it's going to be a big pain in the arse. Which of course will be another GIANT excuse not to work on my zine. It's been a long time, i think the longer it's been the harder it is to start working on it again.

*To Avoid Suffocation from 1998 to 2000 6 issues, The Pocket Rocket from '99 to '02 and it had about 15 issues. MY print run at the largest for TAS was 100 zines. I also did a slew of one off "Art Zines" I have another 15 or so of those to my credit. These were done under the names LessH, LessGull (long stupid story) and simply Less as well as some email addresses.

**A teacher once referred to my handwriting as cockroach droppings on paper. I know this is probably a quote from a book but it really does credit to how BAD my handwriting really it, unless I really try or I'm writing in a particular style or have JUST done some calligraphy my handwriting is the epitome of lazy.

fall is here

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fall is here
Originally uploaded by lessherger

I’ve been steadily working in my journal. THis is from a week or so ago. It’s a gesso covered page, written on in sharpie, covered in gesso, areas masked out, painted on in paint, masked, then stenciled with paint and spray inks. I applied a layer of watercolor crayons and sealer. I loaded a bunch of pages from my journal into flickr. You can see them here.