Stacked like cord wood
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Challenge!
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!
Postcard Exchange!
I don’t often do exchanges with other artists. There are many reasons, most of which is the fear that I won’t finish or worst yet be judged by artists that I like, a lot. So when it was suggested by 2 ladies that make really excellent art that I participate in a postcard exchange I said yes, but with reservations in my ability to produce 2 postcards of any quality and worried about judgement. Ultimately I was motivated by lust greed, I REALLY wanted a piece of Jazmin and Tammy’s art in my hands.
I made a stack of postcard sized images on heavy watercolor paper and let them sit. Then about a week before they were due I rifled through the images and picked 2 that I liked. I addressed and stamped them and sent them on their journey. (To see the one I sent Jazmin go here. And to see the one I sent Tammy see here.)
In return I was sent 2 beautiful pieces of mail art.
I’ll show them off in the order they arrived:
Jazmin:
Tammy/DaisyYellow:
Everything I see is just so perfectly “them.” Even if they hadn’t signed the pieces i’d know exactly who made what and when. So awesome So Amazing. Go see their blogs Jazmin and Tammy.
Do you want to get in on a postcard swap? Check out iHanna's swap over here.
Review: Pentel Hybrid Technica .04
This pen came free with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, I wasn’t expecting much from it, honestly I thought it looked like “just another rollerball.” These are available from Jetpens, Amazon, Blick and other assorted places all over the net. Blick’s seems to offer the best price on the 4 pack of sizes, and you’re probably going to want to test these out yourself after you read my review.
So, yes, it’s a rollerball. It’s an ultra fine point rollerball with a tungsten tip. The 04 tip is fine, very fine, much thinner than any .05 tip I’ve seen. It’s close in size to the fine sized RapioCraft pen. The ink is VERY black and crisp. The edges hold up well even when writing across damp sections of the page. It doesn’t spread. It will spread if you add water to it when it’s still wet. Once dry this ink is waterproof, even on acrylic. It dries relatively quickly on paper but takes a LONG time to dry completely on acrylic. It writes well over acrylic, not quite as well as a regular cheap-o Bic but well enough that I’d use it again.
It comes in sizes from .03 up to .08, with the .07 and .08 sizes more difficult to find. The pens also come in 4 packs of sizes .03- .06. I could see a 4 pack of these becoming a regular writing, drawing and sketching tool. It comes with a cap or as a retractableThe various websites make the following claims: acid free, archival, light fast, waterproof (true), and fade resistant. I can’t address the rest of the claims but I can say that it is waterproof.
I’m definitely impressed with this pen. I’ll be buying more of these to have in my sketching kit as well as my art journaling kit.
tell it to the page
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.
More #DoNotPin Garbage
So pinterest has released a small snippet of code that you can embed in your website/blog that blocks the pin it bookmarklet. This is good news. I was really worried I was going to have to watermark all my images here on the old blog . I was really not interested plus, I think it looks like butt. However, it leaves my thousands of images on Flickr vulnerable to being pinned. I really wish that Flickr woudl take a more proactive approach toward it's members who would like to be protected from tumblr and pinterest, especially since it's so damn easy.
Instead I'm headed to Flickr and finding my most often pinned images, there are a few dozen of a journal I shot back in '08 that get pinned and tumbled, you'll probably recognized them. Each one is getting a discreet little "ComfortableShoesStudio.com" The pain in the ass of this is that I have to open each one up on picnik to edit. Picnik is slow. It means I'll be scouring pinterest looking for my images (if I can bring myself to do it.)
I really think that pinterest should have a one click "hey this violates my copyright" button, no forms, just a click. It should be easier.
Here's one of my images I've had to ruin with a watermark:
oh and another:
First Round: Ink Fade Testing (lightfast)
At the end of December I was wondering if my inks were lightfast, or not. I was wondering given that I’ve done a great deal of drawings with these inks, mostly sketches in my art journal and I was considering venturing out toward finished art with inks. I want to be sure that the art that I sell lasts longer than it takes me to create it. Art lives in very different circumstances from sketches, ie in full light and on the wall. My sketches stay in sketchbooks or live on the walls only when I’m contemplating.
Now, the middle of the winter in the Northeast US is a terrible time to test the light fastness of anything. We’ve had a pretty mild winter with plenty of sunny days. I took all of my inks with my glass dip pen wrote their name on a sheet of paper twice and scribbled a roughly 1cm high line the width of the page.
Over the weeks I noticed that a few inks immediately changed color and some immediately faded. Others didn’t show any changes until the last week or so of the test.
The winners in terms of not changing color at all:
Noodler’s Black, Noodler’s Heart of Darkness, Noodler’s Luxury Blue
The near winners, or those that show little fading:
Noodler’s Eternal Brown, Diamine Chocolat Brown
Faded, but not badly:
Noodler’s Nikita
Terrible fading, losing a component of the color, color shifting, marked change in color and intensity:
Private Reserve Sonic Blue(withing a week), J.Herbin Bleu Nuit (within a week), Noodler’s Fox Red (within a week), Omas New Gray, Noodler’s Lexington Gray
Showing a color shift, and is truly darker than before, though not the same color:
Private Reserve Electric DC Blue
So what does this all mean? Not much in terms of journaling and writing. I’ve looked at some of my sketches from a year or so ago using J. Herbin’s Bleu Nuit, Noodler’s Red Fox, and PR Sonic Blue and can’t see a difference. It takes time in the sun for much of these changes to take place and most of the issues won’t affect anything in a closed journal. I won’t stop using these colors for sketching or journaling anytime soon, but I will stop using the fugitive colors in finished art work.
Review: Pilot Prera Medium Fountain Pen
This is a small pen that is pretty sharp to look at. The clear acrylic is shiny and perfect. The white printing is crisp, every detail looks good. The smoke colored accent pieces on the end of the pen are nice, perfectly translucent yet perfectly gray. This is simply a really good looking pen. The nib is steel and shiny, again very good looking and is very smooth. It lays down a consistently wet line in what I would call fine but is really a medium according to Pilot.
I immediately inked it with one of my favorite blues, Private Reserve Sonic Blue. Sonic Blue is a nice dusky blue that is perfect for work, journaling, and even sketching. It was great in this pen. I can imagine this pen doing well with a variety of inks. The nib is very smooth.
The pen itself is very lightweight and for it to be comfortable, for me, I had to post the cap. When I say this pen is light I mean it, I could barely feel the pen, which caused me to write with more pressure.
I’d heard so many WOWs on the ‘net about this pen I guess I was expecting…. more… It’s a nice pen but at an average retail of about $50 around the internet I’m left underwhelmed. After using it I’d have expected it to retail around $25- $35. It feels a lot like a school pen, one, kids would use, and I suppose that’s who Pilot is trying to appeal to with the bright colors. For $25 I’d have been blown away, for $50 I feel like I gave into peer pressure and spent a tad too much.
If you are looking for a starter pen I’d steer you more toward a Lamy Safari for about $30, a Pelikano for $20, a Kaweco Sport for $22. IF you want to spend $50 get a TWSBI. All 4 of those pens offer a better value for your money than the Prera.
Check the ‘bay to see if you can find one for around $25- 35. I doubt you will for awhile, these pens are in strong demand right now and I paid a little more than I should have for mine and I waited 3 or 4 months for that deal.
Don’t Pin MY Stuff #donotpin
Pinterest. Sigh. I've written about how much I dislike Tumblr and Pinterest due to finding a ton of unattributed images on both sites. That was way back in September of last year.
And now this article created a firestorm on twitter this afternoon. (search for #donotpin on twitter)
My feelings on Pinterest (and tumblr) can be articulated as follows:
- Pinterest should link back to the creator DIRECTLY
- Attribution should never ever be stripped.
- They should only create a thumbnail of the image, not store a hi-res image.
- Their weak section in ToS "you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Cold Brew Labs the rights in such Member Content, as contemplated under these Terms" is complete bull shit and probably won't hold up in court should an artist be damaged by their website. After all they know how their users USE their produt- to pin stuff that doesn't belong to them. If you pin my stuff without my permission (without attribution) then you have damaged me.
Every click on either of the 2 services that should come here is a damage. I know my pics on flickr have been pinned and shared on Tumblr. Imagine my surprise at finding my art journal pages shared without attribution? Shocking, only not, when you start to follow an image around the service. One person pins it, another pins from their pin, and another and another. After the 3rd click you stop looking for the original page out of shear frustration. How many sales have been lost to good honest artists and craftspersons to the vortex that are these 2 sites. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't make money off their service, but they should be more fair to the artists and crafts people who are really the driving force of their site.
This quote gets at the heart of why I hate pinterest so much, "If someone pins a photo on Pinterest, they've created a competing version of the image, which could siphon image search traffic away from the source site." (Link to original article.)
Pinterest and Tumblr may just drive me toward watermarking my photos, though I hate watermarks. It's the only way for me to drive traffic to my blog if someone steals an image. So, you know, don't pin my stuff.
Another Cowboy
I thougth I'd show you another cowboy drawing. I started this guy the same as the last- with the Pilot Technica .04, quickly scratching out the basic lines. This image is about 5×7 inches just a little larger than the last few drawings I've loaded up.
After that I added the shades of gray, using layers to get darker shades of gray.
Finally I added black with the brush pen.
Obviolsly I'm totally digging these brush pens. I've found a figure drawing class and I think i'm going to go and draw with this pen combination. Additionally, I've used the Loew Cornell pens I reviewed here with this technique and it's pretty cool when they bleed into the gray ink. Also the pens are way more comfortable when used for drawing than when writing.