Tag Archives: journal

Hump Day Prompt #4 Toned Pages

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The prompt is open ended and deals only with the
material, subject and content are up to you, but the
material is dictated.

White pages can be intimidating and boring. I like to randomly turn through my journal and "tone" a page with either watercolor or gouache. I try to stick with a nice even layer of color that doesn’t quite come to all the edges and is a little imperfect. If you like working in colored pencils this adds a fantastic layer of tooth to the page, allowing it to hold a lot of color. It’s also fantastic for pastels.

Prompt #4- Go through your journal with some
basic colors of gouache or watercolors, tone pages. Lay down a thin even coat of one color to
a page. Try yellow ochre (or yellow), red, blue and green. Let the pages dry over
night and then draw on them with a thin sharpie. Nice isn’t it. Gouache has
great tooth for drawing. Try drawing on it with pencil, colored pencil, and
pen. Now go back and add more colors. Mhhh nice isn’t it? You like that don’t
you?

Leave a comment with a link to your blog with pictures of what you’ve done!

(Note: this can also be done with acrylic but that limits what you can put on the page afterward to more acrylic, which is why my suggestion is to stick to watercolor or gouache for this- they way you can add to it with just about anything and even layer on acrylic later if you want.)

Hump Day Prompt #3- Reversable Water Based Media

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Hdprompt

The prompt is open ended and deals only with the
material, subject and content are up to you, but the
material is dictated.

The next item to add color is watercolor or gouache. Both
are a type of water based paint. I love both for different reasons. Watercolor
allows you to create beautiful rich layers of color that are vibrant and pop of
the page. It’s hard to use and difficult to master. But they can be found cheap
and allow you to add color over inky lines. Gouache on the other hand is
thicker opaque and works more like a water based oil color than watercolor,
though it can be thinned to use like watercolors. It’s great for putting in
thick layers of color, toning pages and creating flat designs. It can also be
used to beautifully render subjects.

Prompt #3 Use a water based reversible media, pick one
watercolor or gouache. Subject is up to you.

Leave a comment with a link to your blog with pictures of what you’ve done!

New Art: “Life Illustrations”

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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:

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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.

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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.

Hump Day Prompt #2- Colored Pencils

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Hdprompt_2

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!

New Hedgehog Moleskin

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Immediately after finishing my last hedgehog/ moleskin I started a new one. This one has distressed brown and black sheep hide covers, is 3.5×5.5 in size and was entirely hand made by me. It got kraft paper pages which is something new for me to work on. I used rough wrapping paper kraft paper for the pages too so it has a great texture for drawing and such.

So far it has been taking every sort of abuse I can hand to it, thus far in this book, I’ve gesso’d pages in clear and white, tinted pages with acrylic, glued in magazine pages with matte medium, sanded gesso off the pages, added layers of magazine, acrylic and ink. I’ve scraped with a pallet knife and credit cards. I’ve wiped on and off with a rag. All in all this paper is tough as nails. Unlike the 140lb printmaking paper it does cockle a bit but after drying it smooths out quite a bit. I’m very pleased with the amount of abuse that this book has taken, and to think that this books was one I deemed unsalable because I screwed up and trimmed the cover short. (Note how far the fore edge pokes out from the cover. Looks good with this but not so good when first made.)

After you get done looking at these pictures head on over to my Flickr account and see more pictures. I didn’t load them all here because it takes longer but at flicker you can see all the spreads thus far that are in the book.

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Chapbook from 1999

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I made this book in collaboration with a friend of mine. It is pretty much the only book I’ve made in collaboration with anyone. It’s a pretty simple Japanese stab style binding. Done with black cotton crocheting thread. The stations were bored with a dremel. The fore edge of each page is the folded edge of the sheet of paper. at the time of printing I had a ancient bubble jet. I was working some place where once a week I had unfettered access to the photocopy machine… I made zines then too. I printed the text, took it to work, copied the pages onto my really nice paper took them home and printed by hand all the little block prints then collated and folded every book, clamped and drilled holes then stitched it all up. The whole process took a long long time. My friend and I were mailing back and forth a notebook with the images and text, until we had everything agreed upon, then I typed it all up and emailed it to my friend, she tweaked the text, then I made it fit onto the page.

I’ve got to say that this was a great project, I love how the final product came out. I think we made a total of 100 books. The cost was a lot though. I was really poor at the time of us making this as was my friend, I want to say that we spent about $50 getting this thing going and never made any money on it. I still have a stack of the books. I sold a few on eBay and my friend had the other half of them and I’ve still got a stack of them.

I still thing that they are really cool.

   

coptic bindings a bunch of styles and a cautionary tale of DayQuill and Movie Marathons

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On Tuesday I found a few old posters at work, I asked the
representatives about them, if they were to be used again all said no and that
I could have them. I knew that at least one of the posters was at least 3 years
old, the other at least 3 seasons old. I knew in advance that they wouldn’t be
used again. Bringing them home I tried to figure out what I was going to do
with them. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to glue to them- one was a thin sheet
of plastic and the other typical vinyl coated ad glued to thin foam core.
Neither of which would take glue well, I knew it was going to have to have
Coptic stitching to use these posters.

SO I cut them all up, somewhat randomly to 3.5×5.5 inches
and then punched a series of 4 holes in each cover. I also matched up the
covers with some recycled backer board (very much like book board) that I had
saved from packages of tags also from work.

I expected that I wouldn’t have a chance to work on any of
these books until Friday, when I was to have my 2 days off. Instead I caught my
significant other’s cold and I have been sick and I’m still ill. It’s one of
those head colds where concentration is difficult and “stuff” comes from
sinuses. Let us not talk about that. Let’s talk of pleasant things like Coptic
stitching.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done any style of Coptic stitch,
other than long stitch. I’ve been quite caught up in this recycled thing. So
I’m out of practice and on the first 2 books I made, it shows. The first one I
made was a standard 2-needle sewing done twice. The first set of stitching went
well and looked great. I started the second set and it went well until the last
signature. Where I forgot myself (James Bond Double OH Days of Christmas on
Spike- my favorite cold weather TV marathon) and pulled in the wrong directions
with too much tension. The combination of DayQuill and James Bond made me want
to find a bad guy to toss it at to distract while I got away… (Only partially
kidding, DayQuill does make me a little loopy.) I patched it up and cursed the
fact that I had tied off the other set of stitches already, because if I hadn’t
I would have been able to simply remove the bad signature and attach the cover.
Ah well. See some pictures of my mistakes below.

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The next mistake I made was when I decided to attempt a
particularly difficult Keith Smith stitching where you attach the covers to
each other first and then stitch on as if you are sewing onto cords. Instead of
attempting this sewing with a single cord I attempted it with a double cord and
a pack. Here again I blame the DayQuill for giving me a sense of ability far
beyond my 2 year lay off from a stitch. It’s far better to practice a stitch a
few times before attempting it on a cover you like. It’s also better to
practice on easier stitched before attempting something so… Difficult. (Before
anyone leaves a message scoffing at the difficulty of said stitch I implore you
to go take a dose of DayQuill, fill your nose with mucus, smack your head with
a hammer and get back to me after attempting any stitching.) Again check out
the picture below. I realize now looking at the picture that though I wanted to
do a loop and pack I didn’t pack as I had intended. Go figure.

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The next 4 books were very successful 2 single needle
coptics, one with a larkspur and braided linen book marker, one double needle
stitch twice on the spine and a particularly interesting spine with black
leather “split tapes” with a stitch and pack on them. The leather is then
stitched onto the cover. For all the work that book was it’s my favorite. I
love the binding and it just looks great. The red on black is a great
combination and the dense heavy stitching is fantastic as well.

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I fell in love with the book with the coffee cup and coffee
beans. I managed to punch the holes on it upside down but still I love the
cover and I’m keeping that one for me, a little feel better soon gift to
myself.

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Each is filled with 200 pages of Wausau opaque in ivory,
unlined, acid free paper. I cannot vouch for the archival or acid free nature
of the covers. I did test the backer board and it is lightly acidic. The
stitching is all done with hand waxed Irish linen thread, unbleached but dyed.
The 3 books without imperfects will be up on etsy later today and I’m deciding
what to do with the 2 books with imperfections. I’m considering putting them up
on eBay as a set. Or maybe something fun.