This video is about how to make a cool grunge textured background. I looks like peeling billboards and paper. Easy to do. You need the following to create this back ground:
Below you’ll find a list of art jouranling technique videos available for FREE on youtube, Vimeo and Blip.
This is a list of peeps I’ think make videos without too much bull
shit. You won’t need to fast forward through half the video to get to
the techniques being shown, listen to minutes of inane babbling before
you get to the real thing your there for. IN no particular order and
with commentary:
If you have any links to a youtuber without the bull shit leave a
comment and I can add it to the list. I”m going to make this a “page”
that will be links on the left of my blog all the time.
*On this page I mean BS to mean that there is talk, not the style of BS that got me started in making this page which is negativity and a general LACK of art discussion or technique or simple pimping of one’s art classes.
the horse is really cool as are the lines in this piece on flickr.
My fingers aren't working well so I'll probably edit this in the afternoon, so bear with me for the day…
First off head over to my online buddy's site The Artistic Biker. He's started his first art journal this weekend and he's off to a fantastic start. He's got his daughter started too. Way to go on starting kids off with a lifetime habit that is both educational and very good for emotional well being. I'm sure she'll look at her journals when an adult with fond memories of her father. I htink I was around 10 or so when I was given my first journal. I was one of those orange red locking 5&10 (five and dime) 5 year Diaries. I wasn't artistic in it at all, just wrote my pre-teen angst. Infact I didn't start to journal on a daily basis until I was 12. Which is when I filled the little journals and bought a 6×9 college ruled spiral bound notebook. I decorated the cover with a collage and over the next year filled it with dreadful teen angst. I have all the journals I've ever written. I'm missing 1 from my college years but over all they are all here, somewhere in my home. I digress.
This weekend I created what I'm calling a basic journal. 128 pages of great cardstock, smythe sewn, and a simple cover made of board and decorative papers. they measure 5×8 inches and 1 fat inch thick. The cover is soft and flexible but not too too soft. the cost of them is low, but they are great quality. I've priced them at $12. Find them here on my artfire shop.
Some Artfire news. I'm stoked that they are offering a holiday season free-for-all. All members can list unlimited items for the holiday season. They stay up until January1st, 2010. No fees, no gimmicks no catches. Sell stuff for free and hold onto all that cash you'd be spending on fees. Your saving $36 on the verified subscription price. As a way to pass on all the savings I'm offing a $2 coupon code for all the reader's of my blog, enter PASSITON at checkout.
I've been watching more videos on youtube, looking for stuff to post here and also for inspiration. I've also been looking at photos of art on flickr. One of the things that I've noticed is the overwhelming amount of unique journals people are using. Of course there is the ubiquitous moleskine, one of my former faves. but there are also large quantities of other books being used. There is the reclaimed or re-purposed hardback book in which the artist gessoes the pages and works on a printed page. There are spiral bound books, which I've never been a fan of for art journaling but was for sketching- they lay flat, come in a variety of papers and are easily found. The are also great if you focus on writing in your journal. There are the coptic and long stitch handmade books, I've also noticed and interesting phenomenon in which people are working on a plain flat page and then punching 3 ring binder holes and binding the pages in big giant 3 ring binders or into scrapbook covers. Whichever style of book you choose there are lots of options out there.
Take for instance, you can get a unique decorated moleskine on artfire for not too much more than you would pay for one at B&N or Borders. These are pre-decorated by an artist in many styles.
To find a reclaimed hardback book one needs only go to the local library and look for a book in the sales pile, ask your librarian for help. Also the Salvation Army and Goodwill have book section which you can go through. My local Saver's store has a section of some cool and wacky books, many of which would make great altered books. Also don't look past some of those "employer schwag books" these are the books that employers give out at interviews and job fairs to try and get people interested in coming to work for them. Some larger companies have some really nice schwag books, perfect for manipulation and editing.
Coptic books are a favorite of mine, They are great for sketching outside becuase the binding easily folds over on itself, they are often hardback, which makes for great sketching support, the binding looks really cool, the thread binding is sturdy. The bast part of all, you can stuff the pages full of extra glued in bits and goodies and the won't stress the spine too badly. A search in artfire brings up pages of great and well made one of a kind unique coptic bound journals.
The long stitch books are one of my favorites. they come in a variety of leather cover, recycled covers and interesting stitches. They fold over on themselves, can be hardcover or a limp cover, the stitches are visible on the spines and can be very decorative. Best of all they are tough. I've been making and using almost exclusively long stitch bound books for the last 10 years or so and they survive abuse like you wouldn't believe. You can toss them in the bottom of a bag, stomp on them, spill coffee on them, drop them in a lake and they come out looking pretty good and the binding survives.
While I'm not a fan of 3 ring binders you might be interested in trying the binder method out. There are some very fun and unique 3 ring binder covers on artfire. I found them by searching for 3ring binder. Very cool. I also found some neat rubber stamps that way.
Whatever you chose try something handmade and unique to get you through this holiday season. By careful Artfire shopping you might find that you make it through spending less than if you bought mass produces crap made overseas.
I loaded some new items up to my artfire shop. 2 more art covered journals filled with 100% cotton sketchbook paper and original art on the covers.
I listed a dozen new jotter sets with mixed paper inside. The paper ranges from lined paper, graph paper, pink, blue, green, to all sorts of natural shades I usually use. I had a box, a large one, from 10 years of binding of various papers I just didn't have enough of to make a full book. I literally shuffled the pages together to mix them up, and used 15 sheets for each jotter, for a total of 60 pages. Each of these jotters is unique and the mix of papers is individual.
I also listed one NOS or new old stock hedgehog/ moleskine journal. It's covered in this old school leather that reminds me of those old time leather basketballs. I can't find this leather anymore and I used this last piece to make this book, back in 2007. The journal has sat in a wrapper, in a drawer since then. I considered using it, becuase I like the leather that much, but decided against it and listed it again. I've got it up for less than normal.
I also listed 2 more brand new hedgehogs, one with a chocolate brown leather cover filled with cream paper and another with a bomber jacket brown leather filled with pale green paper.
I also re-listed the palomino pencils. These are the last packages I have of the HB and 2b, my favorite sketching softness. After I finish with those I'll list some of the other pencils I have left over from my old website. (Does anyone remember when this used to be a website with stuff for sale? Me either.)
You can follow the links in the text to any of the mentioned items, as always feel free to ask me any questions or for more picture if you're interested.
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.
I really really love Susan Cornelis’s work. She does some images of chickens that I simply adore, but I”m also a fan of her collages and sumi ink drawings/ paintings that she calls Soul Collages. It looks to be something of an automitic drawing process that involves sumi ink poured onto a wet page, manipulated with various tools and then collaged on with color added. It would be a great way to work out ideas, get inspiration and to work yourself out of a rut. This could easily be adapted to working in a spread of a journal- smooshing pages together to manipulate the ink. Reminds me of a rorshack test.
An art journal should be a safe place to explore feelings, ideas, art techniques, educations, your belly button and everything else in your life. In your art journal you should be free and feel free to do that. If you are focusing on the end product you lose the point of keeping an art journal and that is to explore all thatI listed above. What the page looks like at the end doesn't matter as much as getting it to that point and HOW you got to that point. Don't approach the page thinking of how it's going to look at the end. Start working on the page without thought.
Write.
Draw.
Paint.
Scribble.
Scrub.
Glue.
Do What feels right.
Do what feels wrong.
Try new things in your art journal. No one else needs to see it, unless you want them to. Be happy. Be sad. Angry. Melancholic. drunk. Introspective. Think about yourself. Your family. The world. Politics. Mass Media. Hysteria. Your friends. People you don't know. Think it out. Write it down. Draw it. Paint it. Doodle. Scribble. Wax. INk Stamp Charcoal. Scrub. Brush. Sand Emboss.
Try things.