Earlier this year I went to Maine to visit my family and take a brief vacation from work. I had made a sketchbook filled with 140lb 100% cotton paper. It was awesome to work with, the combination of the paper and the handmade book made it easy to draw what I wanted to and add the color I wanted. See below for few pictures of the book.
I’ve always been a fan of the 1000Journals
project by someguy. I first noticed it years ago and I’ve noticed it in the
blogs again. If your into art journaling, sketching and well designed journals
check out the site and look at the plethora of images.
Lifehack.org has an article up about energy sinkholes, things that sap time and energy away from the important stuff. This adapts and relates to all things, even art. I took a look at the sinkholes and which of them keep me out of my studio and it was interesting to think that I subscribe or do so many of them. I like to think of myself as an intelligent person but looking at the stark list of these sinkholes I had to think to myself how could I do them and not even realize it?
So my list is pretty basic. These are all things that I do that keep my out of the studio. I have see how scheduling things for my “free” time has given me some freedom as to the chains that kept me shackled to my computer all night. For instance this blog is written mostly on Sundays and some early AM’s before work. I wrote everything up and use typepad’s nifty post scheduler to put my posts out on a schedule. Rather than doing what I used to do for the other blog- either type it up in a word doc and cut and paste it in or put it in and save as a draft and then hope to remember to post it later.
One of the other sinkholes that I’ve been trying to cut back on is TV. With the fall season of shows out all my favorites are on so I’ve been using our DVR to it’s fullest. I record the shows that I like, skip those I don’t and watch only the show itself and skip all the ads. A 1 hour show really now only lasts 40 minutes. I’ve also been trying to cut back on the amount of shows that I watch, but with a lot of new shows out that I like I’m having a hard time with that. So my solution is that on Sunday when I do my blogging to multitask and bring my laptop into the living room and blog on the couch. At least that way I’m combining 2 time sinks into one.
So now that I’m thinking about how I’m killing my free time I’m more aware of it.
I was surfing the internet and I found the blog of Susan Cornelis and all I could say is wow. The address of her blog is http://susancornelis.wordpress.com/ She does a lot of sketches, interior, exterior and sumi ink drawings. Her use of color is evocative and makes her images pop. Her use of line is fantastic as well. Her image filled blog will keep one busy for hours and it’s the sort of blog that you can’t just walk away from, you feel like you have to keep looking.
I don’t have pictures yet but I bought more graph paper, so I made a metric ton of graph paper jotters. They came out great. I also stitched up a lot of blocks for hedgehogs- 8 with 65 lb super stiff cover stock in cream, 120 pages in 6 signatures. The blocks came out really nice. Later this week I’ll be gluing them up and cutting covers.
I’m also working on some of the journals I used to make- leather with paper backing and super nice paper inside. Yeah baby. I’ll get some pics up tomorrow.
The book press below might not be pretty but I’m sure it’s plenty serviceable and would give anyone the amount of pressure they need to press up a few hedgehogs. I found it on this website. And it’s currently for sale.
It’s made from a pipe clamp- readily available from any woodworking store or big box building store like Home Depot. Most pipe clamps can be bought in the pieces and you then buy the pipe to mount the clamping pieces and the system works through leverage. After sliding the top clamp into place you then screw the turn screw to create the tight pressure. Because you can buy pipe in any length this is a great design to work with- the only limit to the stack is how high you want to go. I wouldn’t suggest going over 16 inches, but that’s a lot of books. Hurrah for a binder thinking outside the box and making something that works, is relatively inexpensive and provides more than enough clamping pressure for the home binder.
Kirsty Hall has 10 tips for artists. It’s a great list and everybody should head over and read it.
Excerpt below:
4: Love Your Process
I’ve seen far too many people, particularly at art school, endlessly
struggling with a medium or form that they just don’t enjoy. Why? Art
is hard enough without handicapping yourself with a process that
doesn’t excite you. You need a certain amount of joy to get through all
the bits that you don’t like, so don’t lumber yourself with a form that
just doesn’t do it for you – it’s not noble, it’s just masochistic!
For some reason #4, quoted above really resonated with me. Why was it in art school that I forced myself to labor over acrylics on canvas when I hated it and beat myself up for not using oils? I should have spent my time creating book art, books, sketches and watercolors. I can only imagine the artist I would be now if I focused my time and effort- 4 years worth, on art that I loved!
Don’t think of what you should have done do it.
Here’s another one for the GTD and planner crowd. Like I
wrote previously staples has these fancy new business card wallets. I bought
one I couldn’t resist. I see how they can be useful in a number of ways.
In my
new position I’m striving to make contacts that are useful, I won’t go into it
too much here but I’ve found in this new position that I’m getting business
cards from people. Like I’ve said in my previous posts business card are the
best for quickly passing off contact info. So as I’ve picked up a few cards
here and there I’ve realized I like to keep them on me.
Since I don’t have a
fancy cell phone and I’ve already maxed out my 12 number phone book, I need to
keep the cards on me. I figured I’ll have the card file on me at all times. So
I needed a way to organize it.
Post-it tabs are my solution. It turns a card file into a
portable rolodex. I’ve divided it up into personal and work numbers. My boss’s
card is the separator for the work cards and my significant other’s card is the
divider for the personal cards. I keep cards to my website and art in the back
and work business cards in the front. Cards as I collect them are stored in the front pocket
One additional item that I made for this is a card of
post-it tabs. I used an old starbucks card, put large tabs on the front and
small tabs on the back, 2 of each color and then a small stack of notes on
there too. That way I always have post-its available at all times.
Maybe the next time you journal you can choose a new identity to force yurself into a new way of thought? that’s what the journaler and blogger here thought up. Check out the pic below for an interesting pictorial thought on this idea.
I like the idea, and its a nice way to take an old writing prompt and explore it over again. For those of use who are visual journalers what about drawing or writing in someone else’s style?
I just loaded this set of 6 jotters up to eBay. Each has 48 pages made of Wausau pastels 24lb paper in ivory color. The covers are made from advertising posters that are coated in vinyl. These posters advertised Easter dinners. The colors are pale yellow, pinks and some light green. Low starting bid and a low buy it now price. Made 100% by hand.
