Totem Doodle

1 Reply

I found this website via the Doodler's Anonymous twitter. It's epically cool and makes you think of what you can draw in a small square. My high school art teacerh (Mrs. Friedman) had an exercise where you were asked to grid off a page in 1 inch squares, it had tobe precise, she checked it, then in each square you had to make marks, had to come up with as many different marks as possible. You scored better if your marks were all diddferent or you came up with ideas to make the grid work with itself. You could cross your lines (no crosshatching and no scribbles). It's a great exercise for a lot of different work. I feel li ke the totem project is a rift on that.

Whe I'm partilarly blocked I go back to this or a riff on it. Sometimes I draw equal sized circles on a page in my journal and fill them in with marks or faces. I"ve also folded a sheet of paper into equal sized yet small sections and done the grid exercise. I'm not as militant about no scribbles or cross hatching, after all rules were made to be broken and the idea is to free myself to get out of the rut.

try making a few 2 inch squares in your journal, go ahead now fill them in…

Kitti Graffiti

Leave a reply

Check out the website Kitti Graffiti it's hilarious but gives me ideas about pasting things into a journal and sketching on it to make it into something else.

It would be neat to paste a pic into a journal, gesso around the stuff you don't want and then sketch onto it to make other things. I think I'll try it.

Craig Atkinson

Leave a reply

I like nothing more than browsing sketchbooks that the artist's have been so gracious as to load up for my viewing pleasure, Craig Atkinson is one of those gracious people. Check out his many many journals/ sketchbooks online here, be prepared to spend an hour or so, there's a lot of good stuff for your viewing pleasure

Custom Recycled Journal

Leave a reply

MY friend asked me to make her a custom recycled journal to give as a gift, so I did. The cover is made of a recycled advertising sign with pockets stitched into it for support and storage. Inside are 240 pages of Wausau 30% post consumer waste recycled paper with 25% cotton and it's a nice 24lb paper. It's a natural color with green lines for writing.

I stitched it up with heavy hemp thread, lightly waxed for ease of use. The stitching is simply a linked long stitch. I really like how the hemp looks against the cover.

IMG_1010 

IMG_1013 

IMG_1010

Things kids today will never know about

Leave a reply

This article from wired.com had me thinking.I has nothing to do with books or journaling, but it made me thing so I'm posting it here, because it could be a good thing to spark some great memories for journaling purposes.

It made me think of the first time we popped in a VHS tape and watched a movie and on Christmas eve when we hooked up the NES for the first time and my brothers, Dad and I stayed up ALL night playing super Mario Brothers and swapping games with our friends; thought of an age before the internet and programing basic in DOS on an Applie IIe in the sweltering heat of our upstairs office. It made me think of my Dad's first CD player, a realistic that was the size of a DVD play is now, and the great pains we took to put it in the car, in a foam cradle so it wouldn't skip; and how it always did. It made me think of my first CD player and my first CD (Pixies Trompe le Monde) and listening to it for hours.

Anyway, what does this article bring to your mind? Journal it.

Recycled Sign Journal Stack

Leave a reply


REcycled Sign Journal Stack
Originally uploaded by lessherger

Not a great pic of these journals but it gives you an idea. I’ve been working on these all week. Monday I stitched the covers. tuesday I punched the holes and folded the paper. Wednesday I trimmed the paper. and The rest of the week I stitched them all together. this sort of piece work makes these seem to go really fast.

Most of these are on my ArtFire Shop here.