Check out Imperfet Impulses, he's got a bunch of AJ prompts and some great ideas.
Danny Gregory writes about the voice in his head.
I've been thinking about independence. Check out these videos about tiny houses.
I’ve been doing a lot of doodling. One of my all time favorite cheap-o pens for doodling is the Uni-ball Vision Fine Point
C likes to use a medium point pen versus my needle point pens. She likes a nice smooth point so I usually stick with the Uniball pens, but I happened into Staples and found they had the Zebra Sarasa retractable pens in 0.7 black ink
Why do I like these pens? First off they are dirt cheap in the arena of waterproof/resistant pens. The ink is dark and doesn’t erase off the page when cleaning up pencil. The pen itself is as comfortable to use as any other clicky ball point, the build and construction is similar to
the Pilot G2, but I find that I get skipping with the G2 but none with the Sarasa. In other words the ink is smooth, dark and flows well when compared to other gel ink pens. Also one of the issues I have with the G2 is that it develops bubbles in the ink and then doesn’t work. The
Sarasa doesn’t seem to suffer from this effect, which is good.
In short a fantastic pen for art purposes, especially given the price.
Love these black and white images.
Kelly Kilmer thinks about art and Profit.
Tracy Moore writes about no rules journaling, lot's of pictures too!
I love to read about pencils, this blog goes in depth on the… Bic Matic!
This post on the Fountain Pen Geek forum has me thinking about drawings-a-day.
Have you ever thought of making your own gelli plates? You can from gelatin. It's great stuff.
Take a look at some of my journals on etsy.
Or take a look at my art on etsy.
I’ve
been debating whether or not I should make my own notebooks for school
or if I should just buy them. I decided to pick up a few composition
notebooks to see how the various brands fared with fountain pens. I’ve
been a fan and have used the Staples Sustainable Earth composition
notebooks for around the garage and workbench thinking notebooks for
hacking out designs on my bike builds and other things. I’ve been a big
fan of them for awhile. While out picking up some supplies I grabbed a
new one figuring it was a safe bet for school. It seems that Staples has
changed the composition of the paper just a tad. It’s now 80% bagasse,
or sugarcane. I’m not sure what it was before but this paper has some
major differences. I compared it to a page from an old Sustainable Earth
legal pad.
The
old paper wasn’t super smooth but it was nice and performance with a
fountain pen was awesome. Line width was true to the nib, no feathering,
no soak through but there was show through. It was a great inexpensive
paper that was easy to find anywhere. 100 sheets was $2.49 anywhere in
the US. It was available in legal pads too, which were a favorite of
mine for taking notes while on the phone at work, and now for working on
ideas for classes and my writing. This paper was awesome.
The
new paper is not as smooth as the old paper. I tested both sides of the
page and while one side is slightly smoother than the other, it’s not
as smooth as the old. Line width is not true to the nib size. My medium
pen looks like a bold and my EF a medium. Feathering was rampant with
many inks. Noodler’s Eternal Brown feathered badly. Diamine Chocolate
feathered so much as to be unusable. Private reserve Sonic Blue was a
mess. Soak through was awful, many inks, normally well behaved inks,
soaked through to the page behind, leaving spots on the unused page.
Soak through was as bad as if I had used Sharpies to write. Given my
enjoyment of ink variety this is a deal killer for me.
I
decided to test the paper would with a variety of pencils and pens.
Pencil was great on the paper, it was rough enough to take a nice dark
line with mechanical pencils as well as regular wooden pencils. I tested
out a Zebra Sarasa 0.7 in black ink. It soaked through. Yes, gel ink
soaked through in some spots.
I
deem the new Staples Sustainable Earth Composition Notebook to be the
most useless notebook of the year, unless you use only pencil. Well, I might see if I can cut pages out to use as thin blotter paper, it might be useful like that, but I doubt it would do a good job at that either.
At
first it starts out that I forget to post the thing to Etsy. Then I
just decided to stop doing that altogether because well, just because.
Then I forget to post my page for the day, and I get that up first thing
the next day, then I do a half assed page the following day because I’m
stressed that I forgot the previous day. Then my washing machine dies.
Then the car’s muffler decides to go on walkabout. And I’m stuck driving
my loud car to the laundromat to wash my underwear and because I chose
to go on Saturday afternoon at an out of the way place so as to avoid
the cops on Main st, it’s me and the woman with some sort of rash and
some of the worst nail fungus I’ve ever seen doing laundry while C
returns the redbox, picks up something for dinner, and then returns to
pick up me and the wet clothing, since our drier and clothes line still
work. By the time I get home I’m tired and stressed and I forget to do a
page let alone post it.
So screw it.
Then
the 30 day challenge become a spiral of shame that I can’t stick to a
30 day Challenge, after all, it’s ONLY 30 days, wtf can’t I stick to it?
What’s wrong with me? Then i’m all, if so and so can do it, why can’t
I? (Imagine that last part in a plaintive wail.)
The
thing is, I’m being creative, I’m drawing, I’m sketching and I’m
doodling, just not in my prescribed 5×7 book. So here’s a picture of
what I drew while I was waiting for the wash to finish.
And an idea for a bag for my bike.
Ever since Gelli plates came out, people have been gaga with excitement over gelatin printmaking. Well, I was waiting for someone to figure out how to make their own plates and here it is:
I
have a massive clearance sale of old stock items currently up on my
etsy page. (That was worded awkwardly, but you get my drift.) I’ve got
old stock jotters from my old Artfire account, around 25 or so 6-packs,
but the deal is, I get to pick the covers. I didn’t want to spend a lot
of time shooting 100’s of pics so you get what you get for covers. You
can send me a message telling me, “OMG I hate pink.” I’ll avoid pink for
you. I’ve got white paper and not white paper as well as a few packs of
lined, graph and vintage rad IBM paper. $6 a 6-pack, several $ off from
my usual price. I won’t be stitching up any more of this style of
jotter, the machine I used to stitch them died so all my future jotters
will be hand stitched. So, the time to stock up is NOW!
I
also have a bunch of art journaling and sketching supplies that I’ve
been hoarding. Several packages each of Palomino writing and sketching
pencils and some of their colored pencils. Selling WAY below list price.
I also have what I call the “Art Journaling Basic Kit.” It’s got an
assortment of pencils, colored pencils and a KUM brass wedge sharpener.
All materials I like a lot. Also selling way below lists price on these
items. These items ship free if purchased in combination with a journal
or jotter set.
I
also have a bunch of what I’m calling the Behemoth journals, 300 pages
of great paper all stitched into one of my recycled sign vinyl covers.
Why 300 pages? I miss counted when I did my paper folding and put more
sheets than usual into the journals, my mistake is your bonus. These fat
journals are just begging to be filled with your thoughts, gratitudes,
EDM sketches, doodles and art journaling. Also did I mention that they
are awesomely thick? Also, heavy.
Holy Crap! I totally forgot to post this last night.
I did a sketch in pencil of a tootsie roll pop. I as thinking out some ideas in a notebook for a bike trailer. I tore out part of a design that I decided wouldn't work and glued that to the page, partially over the sketch of the tootsie roll pop. I then flooded just the background of the tootsie roll pop with magenta watercolor.
I apologize for not including step-by-step images as I have the for the rest of the 30 in June, I got distracted.
Here's a nifty blog called "The Letter is M."
This blog has a post detailing her early journals. Awesome.
A tumblr with collages, lovely brightly colored collages. I could look at this for hours.
A contest where you nomiate the winner.. Ahem… err, yeah.
The Fountain Pen Netowrk has taken a dive recently and I'm now hooked on the Fountain Pen Geeks forum for all my foutnain pen enabling.
Art is what you make it. 🙂 Love it.
Take a look at some of my journals on etsy.
Or take a look at my art on etsy.
Have a listen to Kim Deal, formerly of the Pixies and the Breeders: (LONG LIVE THE 90's!)
So I cheaped out on you yesterday. And I was going to again today. But I got inspired, deiced to work within the boundaries set, but not.
I started with this, and it was going to be all I did. It takes a long time to write that big, it's a 9×12 sheet of paper covered in my chicken scratch flex writing. Sorry it's hard to read.
Then I decided to cut a chunk of it out and glue it to my 5×7 area.
Then I grabbed some junk mail, and cut part of a logo out. Guess I'm in good hands? then I added a print off of my brain drawing. I then went around those 2 pieces with light blue colored pencil. Coloring hard.
Then I added some magenta watercolor around the whole thing. 🙂 AJ Happiness even at 5×7 inches.
