I wanted to post this picture from Flickr to provide an excellent example of what you can do with just a pen or pencil. This is a fine example of what you can do with just one tool. It’s evocative and just a really great journal page, made with one tool, and in black and white. A piece like this wouldn’t necessarily work with a lot of color. I really like this piece and I think it’s a great example of black and white with one tool.
Another example of black and white done in one maybe 2 media. This person (check out their link to their flickr set) does a lot of work only in black and white. I like it a lot. Black and white is hard to do, but when you do it, it looks so good.
I decided to video my process as I made my newest painting Dirty Baseball. I’ve written about his before but I’mr eally few up with the whole Steroids in Baseball issue. I remember watching all these famous players as kid doing their thing and now I’m told they were cheating all them. I guess I wouldn’t have cared so much if tax dollars weren’t being spent on the Mitchell Report and investigating this whole thing.
Also, Clemens? Awwww geeee, Clemens!?! That really bummed me out.
It’s been a busy week for me. I had a lot of work at my
DayJob that involved me driving all over the great state of Massachusetts. In
addition to that we decided to have our house insulated. (Note: as some of you
are probably aware my significant other and I bought a cute little house a
little over a year ago. While installing some new electrical outlets it became
painfully apparent that there was no insulation in the upstairs. Later we
became aware that there was little insulation in the whole house. After one
winter we realized that we had spent about $300 to $400 per month on heat, and
in the summer running an ac unit in only one room increased our monthly
electric bill by $50.)
It’s taken a little over a week to get all the work done by
3 guys wandering about the house, inside and out. We also had a little issue
with the shower and tiles falling off.
Already we’ve noticed a big difference in the temperature of
the house and how often the furnace will come on. On cold nights last year the
furnace would come on and pretty much stay on all night. Now the heat comes on
for a few brief moments each evening. There are also no chilly drafts like
there once were.
So I’ve been pretty much on the run the last few weeks and
weekends. It’s been good though, I’ve met a few good people and my house is
warmer so I can’t complain.
I haven’t made any new books lately but I’ve had enough time
to work in my art journal doing what I’ve taken to calling “life illustrations.”
In my journal I’ve been doing what I call "Life Illustrations" in that I try to take one aspect of something on my mind and illustrate it in one image, distill it down so that the image is evocative for me later. I’ve done quite a few and many are too personal for me to share but I’ve taken a few from my journal and used those as sketches for a few small paintings and here are 2 of them:
I’ve been quite disgusted with this whole steroids in sports controversy. What disgusts me more is that my tax dollars are going towards investigating it. I’d rather have my money spent on kids in schools than knowing is Clemens infact took steroids. Perhaps Clemens should pay for the investigation with a couple mill of the money he’s made pitching. I made a sketch in my sketchbook of this first. I’ll load up some pics of that later.
I was discussing the idea of a carbon footprint with someone the other day and this image came to mind. You might remember this image from my sketchbook.
I’m putting both of these up on etsy, you can find them here.
Paulette Makes these great little process videos.
The prompt is open ended and deals only with the
material, subject and content are up to you, but the
material is dictated.
Let’s face it lack of color can be, well, boring. There are
lots of things to add color. I use 2 or 3 media off and on depending on mood.
Colored pencils are about as basic as they come and come in lots of colors. Get
a nicer brand; Palomino, Prismacolor or 6mm Prang (trust me on this one- they
are *&*%^ nice!). Don’t buy Crayola colored pencils. They have a hard wax
base that doesn’t lend them to anything but not breaking. A nice colored pencil
will let you layer colors and create rich depth of color or lay on beautiful
thick layers of rich color, or just write in color.
Prompt #2- Use colored pencils to create a journal page. You
can write, draw or glue the colored pencils to the page but you have to create
some sort of image with them.
Leave a comment with a link to your blog with pictures of what you’ve done!
I’ve been hard at work in my art journal. These are some of my recent pages. Most are in layers. First I toned the pages with a layer of gesso and acrylic. Then I wrote the entry in pencil or sharpie. Then I’d layer over the top of that with more acrylic and gesso. On top of that I may have collaged or sketched out an idea of what I wnted on the page. I would then block out the area with gesso if I wanted bright colors. After that I’d add layers of color, using thick impasto painting. In some cases I’d add some sharpie to outline an image. IN other cases I’d used colored pencil. On a few pages I used watersoluble crayons to tone down the pages or add a glow to an image. If I liked how things were going I’d go over the page with some matte medium, then I’d add a layer or 2 of glaze. I’d set that up with my heat gun and then add a little bit of stamp pad ink, I"d use a brush with a little spay of water and thin that out and move it around. Than finally heat set that and then burnish the page with some wax. BTW SOme of the pictures areadult oriented".
It works for me. HEre are some images, or head to my flickr account to see more pictures.
Another NotaMax creation for Inspiration Saturdays.
Feel Free to download and post this image to your blog, please link back here.
