Sketchbuch hits it out of the park again, with these little business card drawings, they are very cool, esp when you consider the size!
MIllande has a great video on many different background techniques,watch the video for some inspiration, these are a little more involved than the last dfew techniques I’ve put up here but I like them.
I'm really digging on Mandy's mixed media work. Her collages use a plethora of daily refuse and I'd love to see her work on a glue book but love the individual pieces as much as I'd love them in book form. (hint hint) Her work in fun head over to flickr and check it out. (She also does a zine and is a poet.)
This is a basic layers tutorial. I particularly like how she did the back ground. A layer of a flat color and then edges done in black and then rubbed off. then elements are collaged on top of that. then rub on designs over hat and journaling added.
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.
I've been working on some special journals. What I've done is take one of the posters I make the jotters out of, cut it up into smaller pieces and then I've journaled on it. So each chunk looks like a giant page out of one of my journals, or is a giant journal sheet. It's what I've been working on over the last few days which explains the lack of real blogging, tweeting and facebooking I've been doing. I'm really excited about these journals.
I'm working on 4 of them right now or rather I've got 4 covers completely finished. So far I've got one book completely finished and one more almost done. They are filled with 50lb, 100% cotton bright white sketchbook paper, 200 pages of it and are stitched with a linking long stitch. I used bright red Irish linen thread for the stitching.
The journal art is sealed with clear acrylic varnish, that allows you to feel the texture of the art but wipe it clean with soap and water if you spill coffee on it, and the art should be undamaged.
I'm still working the details of the pricing out but they will eb listed on my artfire account this evening.
The journal picture is titled "Super Star." I've got more pictures up on my flickr page.
It's a well known issues for art journalers, like myself, who work with heavy body acrylic paints- liquitex and golden that they stick to the previous page if there is one ounce of acrylic on it. And forget it if you apply heat. The pages are done. Samantha gives some good tips. I've got a few of my own. First If you work in acrylic go over the page with watercolor crayons, a think layer spread out with water on a brush helps to keep the pages from sticking. As will a layer of nupastels, artstix or colored pencil. In the art journal I did previous to the current journal I used layers of a 50/50 mix of bee's wax and parafin. I made a palm sized cake of it and would rub it over the top of my dried pages. After that I would buff it into the page with a rag. If I wanted a really heavy layer of the wax I'd heat the page with my heat gun and rub it onto the warmed page, then I'd heat it again and buff. I get very little sticking in that journal and I worked some pages very impasto.
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.
I'm in love with this guy's work. I"ve just spent the last 20 minutes clicking through the links on his flickr stream and I really suggest hat you do to, the pages are simply wonderful. I've put his work up here before but that doesn't mean something great shouldn't be repeated, and it's tribute to how much I really like his work. follow the link and check it out.
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.