Comfortable Shoes Studio

3 Step Sketches

I've been messing about with a trio of pens- the Pentel Hybrid Technica and 2 Pentel Pocket brush pens(PBP), one with black ink and the other with gray. It's been a great combination. For the image below I looked up images on Flickr's Commons page. I happened upon some images from Florida's Archives of various southern ment from the early 1900's, some of whom were Civil War Veterens. I particularly enjoyed this guy.

I started roughly sketching in his face with the Pentel Hybrid Technica (review to follow.) I looked mainly for the large shapes of light and dark, blocking in the dark areas, leaving lights alone. I looked for the edges of things like his eyes, dark shadows, and hair. I used the pen quickly, spending no more than 5 minutes on this part of the sketch.(If I had been doing this a year ago I'd have spent about 10 to 15 min and gone much more slowly.)

 

After I'd blocked in the stuff I felt was important I put down the Technica and switched over to the PBP (pocket brush pen) filled with Omas New Gray ink. I was able to quickly put in the areas of lighter shadow and then build more layers upon that to create more darks. I can't over emphasis the virtues of this ink for sketching- the fact that it starts out as a nice silvery gray and gets darker and darker with additional layers is fantastic. It is not light fast, but is perfectly fine in a sketchbook.

After I was happy with the level of shadows I'd built up with the gray ink I grabbed the PBP with black ink and started to darken the darkest area and add some additional texture with it. The eyes, hair, and shadows were all deepened with this pen.

This pen combination is great, the Technica is great for quick little sketches, it handles being treated roughly quite well. There are some areas where the gray ink will lift the technica ink if I've done really heavy scribbles that overlay one another. It's not noticable in the finished sketch. If you wanted to sketch in pen and ink, these are all the tools you'd need.( I mean, you could add a fountain pen or two, just in case you want another line....)

 

Review: Update Pentel Pocket Brush Pen to Eyedropper

I wrote about the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen here. I suggested in the post that perhaps the pen could be converted to eye dropper fill rather than use the carts. I find that the pentel carts are pretty pricey, though it is awesome ink. They range from $2 for 2 ($2 per cart whoa!!!) to $ 11 for 6! (Jetpens has about the best price I could find.) Converting this pen to eye dropper amount to a massive savings. I found I went through a cart pretty quickly in regular sketching and using the black to fill in the background.

 

I loaded it up with some Omas New Gray. Which is a nice pale silvery gray that layers well, perfect for sketching. It is not a lightfast gray so it should stay in the journal and not on the wall. I’ve posted here about turning a pen like this into an eyedropper and this pen is no different. I used a blunt syringe to fill the barrel with juuust under 3ml of ink. That’s 3 carts of ink, in one fill. While I used a dye based ink I could fill it with a pigment based ink as it’s designed for that, which mean it’s even more awesome.

After letting the ink get to the brush I noticed that the ink flow is a little faster than with the Pentel ink. This could be because the Pentel ink has pigment or is thicker than the dye based ink. The Omas Gray ink has good flow even in a fountain pen. I’ll be trying out more inks once I run through this one. The other good thing is that I can fill my black pen up with Noodler’s Heart of Darkness once I run out of carts of black. (Scored 2 more with this pen.)

 

The best thing about turning this pen eye dropper? It’s simple. All you need is a little silicone grease from the plumbing section of home depot and an eye dropper or a blunt syringe. Money saved? Each fill will save you about $3 over using cartridges.

 

 

Review: Pentel Arts Pocket Brush Pen

I have been coveting a pocket brush pen for awhile. I have a brush pen but it has a incredibly long handle and is a pain because of that. I was comp shopping Michael’s when I came upon this pen. Imagine my horror when I got to the counter and found I’d left my 40% off coupon at home... I put the pen back and came back later. With my 40% off coupon I snagged this pen for a measly $10.83, which is less than I could find it online.

 

It’s sold on a blister pack like most other markers and pens are at Michael’s. Once out of the packaging its a nice looking shiny black pen. It’s comparable in size to most pens on the market. It’s very light weight even with the cartridge plugged into the pen. After wielding a TWSBI 540 for an extended writing session earlier in the day, this is like writing with a cloud. The pen is all black except for a Kanji character on the cap near the clip and the pentel name on the opposite side of the cap.

 

 

After installing the cartridge the ink descends into the brush rather quickly, the brush was fully loaded with 60 seconds of installing the cart. The tip is soft, flexible but springs to a point immediately after pressing it down fully. It is capable of giving a hair thin line or a swath of ink 5mm wide. The ink flow is generous and kept up with some very quick line work. The line variation is quite nice and relatively easy to control.

 

 

 

The ink in the cartridges is reported to be in water resistant. Something that I found interesting is that the back proclaims that the “fittings” are leak proof. This tells me that with some silicone grease this pen could EASILY be converted to eye dropper fill. For me, this is a VERY VERY interesting thing. In my testing I found that the ink is water resistant once dry on paper and when wet gives a very nice wash effect with a nice even gray tone. In effect you could take just this and a water brush sketching and you could do the sketch, allow it to dry, add more ink, add water and get a nice gray tone for your shadows. The ink is not water resistant on acrylic paint until it is FULLY dry. It writes without issue on acrylic, no skipping or beading up. It does take quite some time to dry on acrylic paint- to get to the fully dry point it needs a few minutes.

 

 

 

This pen is a very good price when 40% off but at full price at Michael’s I’m not sure. I’d rather put together a $25 order with Jetpens.

I'll probably do an update to this review once I run through the 2 carts that came with the pen and convert it to eyedropper style.

Reg $16.99 at Michael’s $14 at JetPens

It Eats You Up

One of the many things I've learned over time is that giving into anger for long periods of time isn't helpful. It's one thing to allow anger to burn through you, own it, and then allow yourself to work through the hurt that it is masking.

Last year taught me that my rage was fast burning but that the hurt that my slow burning anger was masking was the root of what needed to be dealt with.

Injustice should be rooted out and the snake oil sales people will pay for their actions, let karma be the bitch.

Promote What You Love

The "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate," images are rolling around twitter and facebook these days. While I agree, and I've seen first hand how powerful promoting something you love can be, both for you and the person; I think it's foolhardy to ignore what you hate entirely.

The story with the ostrich sticking it's head in the sand is a good one, bad things don't go away if you ignore it. The same for tryingto think only positive thoughts, you can't make bad things or depression go away by thinking it away. We aren't magnets and the world isn't fair and sometimes hard work doesn't pay off. Sometimes life sucks.

BUT I've learned that you can make things work for you if you spend some time and are honest with yourself on how you can take that bad situation and force it to work.

My matra will be "Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate; but keep a mindful eye out for the bad stuff."

Realistic vs Unrealistic Goals

I've been planning on doing a little side project from all my other projects, because, you KNOW I need another project! The side project is loosely called "You Said Something, It Was Really Important." (OR, "You Said Something, I've Never Forgotten.")* It consists of photos from my journal, taken all hi-res, made into a PDF and then loaded to MagCloud. From there you'll be able to get a magazine or a download or both. Awesome.

As I was concieving this little project it took a lot less time in my mind, shooting pictures should take X amount of time, creating the PDF should take X amount of time, I can get it done in a night!

Not.

Shooting hundreds of pictures takes hours, not an hour. When you take a picture of a journal you end up having to figure out the BEST way to get the image and it took a few minutes of set up and a couple of tries to get a set up that worked properly for most of my journal page. Also , please note that a large sheet of plexi glass keeps your pages flat and a polarizing filter helps cut the glare and makes colors pop. Once i figured that out I STILL had to wade through the good and the bad in the journals. Some of the stuff is too personal and other still could get me fired from the DayJob if I publish it. I tried to keep a good balance and stayed on the edge- you get to see some stuff that I haven't put online, in hi res, printed glory AND I get to stay employed. It's a win!

In the end I realize I've got more than once zine's worth of stuff or one really FAT zine full of stuff. I'm struggling with how big do I want to make this thing? 50 Pages? 90 pages? 150 pages? Add to that, if I do 150 pages then I'll probably never do another, and I think I want to do another. Also the cost of the thing goes up dramaticaly if I do more than 50 pages. I want to keep it affordable. (BUT, how cool would a 150 page zine be?)

The other part of this is, I really thought, once I shoot the pictures I can flood them into publisher and get my PDF done. Yeah not so easy. There is no easy way to flood 50 images into publisher all at the same size. They all come in at different sizes, need to be resized to the correct size, put in the RIGHT spot, contract and color tweaked so they look correct, background color chosen, etc... Graphic designers of the world I salute you. (Also please tell me that the Adobe suite is easier to use than publisher... Future goal: get a Mac and Adobe.)

So I'm about 33% done and feeling kind of bummed that I won't be able to finish this by the weekend. "You Said Something" won't be ready for another week or so. I'm still debating if I add captions or not. How many words do I add, if I add any at all? Maybe that should all be hand written too... You see where I'm going here? I'm one of those peopel that dives into a project like this head first, no plans and figures it out as I go along,I give myself unrealistic and unattainable goals and then I'm surprised when I bung it up.

So now I know ho wmuch work goes into this, I'll make sure I set more realistic goals in the future.

Watching some RSAnimate

Yesterday I met with a friend of mine, he's a terrific artist and we had a nice long chat over great coffee. During our talk we spoke of the TED talk about school killing creativity. When I got home I looked up the talk, it's a good one and linked below. You should watch it.

In some ways I think that our root fear of play and experimentation in our art and journals, where does it go as we age? We were all pretty creative when we were 5 and 6 and even 7. But at some point we all want to draw realistically (this is tied to developmental milestones) and I think get frustrated and quit. If you look at most kids at specific ages they all go through this. Some of us never get past the frustration.

The next video is about the paradox of choice. It's not directly related to art, but I think you'll see why I put it up here. I think we get into a mode of overwhelming choice when we walk into an art and craft store. It's why it's so easy for companies to shove crap down our throat when we don't really need or want it. Step 1: Overwhelm the consumer with too many choices and Step 2: Prey upon that and TELL them they NEED specific parts to create a project. Never-mind that you could unlock their creativity by teaching skills rather than spoon-feeding a specific project. But then unlocking creativity isn't as good for the bottom line as selling a specific project that requires the person buy items off a list. (Think #cultofstuff)

 

 

 

The final video, in which I think I could do an entire post about, is about the movement about staying positive, and that you can bring everything to you by presenting a positive front. Slap a smile on your face and everything you've ever dreamed of can be YOURS! I'm not afraid to say that sometimes my life and my brain are dark dark lonely places. Sad. I've got a relatively good life- a nice enough house, a car that runs, a lovely wife, a DayJob that pays my bills, and good health. Honestly, I've got it better than many people. I'm happy about that, I won't lie. But there are days when I hate everything about life. It's not wrong to say that sometimes, life isn't fair and life sometimes sucks. That's realistic.

I'm not suggesting we all let it hang out. No, I think we should be realistic in what our lives are like, it's not all sunshine and roses, sometimes it's dog crap on the floor and a flat tire on the highway or a bad day at the job. Not being honest about these facts of our lives is as ridiculous as always painting a smile on your face and pretending they don't happen. These dark spots are WHY I art journal. I pour the shit out onto a page and then turn it. I paint dark little scenes on watercolor paper and then pour ink on it. Denying these aspects of my life isn't honoring myself. Hiding it away doesn't make it go away. No matter how many pretty pages you paint in your art journal doesn't make everything alright.

The process is what makes things right not the product. It's okay to slather paint on a page and just turn the page and never look at it again, every page does NOT have to be finished. MOve on, just like your life moves on. It's the nature of an art journal that you move on. You grow as a person and grow in the art journal. Don't let false positivity hold you back from creating something that is wonderful because you are afraid to explore something that is not happy or perceived as not positive.

 

Honesty, Authenticity, Truthiness and Resonance

When I was in school everyone talked about wanting to make "honest work." The new buzzword for honest work is "authentic." We could spend days over glasses of red wine and mugs of coffee (as we did in college) talking about what this means. In the end it all boils down to, "I want to make work that resonates deeply withing myself and has deep personal meaning." End of story.

Or is it?

I think the truth of all the discussion and thinking on these topics is that essentially we're afraid of what we put on the paper/canvas/board/ or in the journal. Many of us make work and hide it away. It's why the art journal is so perfect, at the end of your art session you close the covers and never ever have to confront what you made again. Simple right? Except you're missing out on a  prime piece of the art journal process- learning from what you've put down and thus from yourself.

I think that fear is why we also buy into what the industry pumps out for us. It's far easier to follow the industry's recipe for success than to forge our own path and style.

Maybe the real question we need to ask ourselves is, "How do we move past the fear and into creating our work? How do we learn from ourselves to create work that resonates deeply?"

It's this hard work that an art journal is intended and supposed to help us explore. If you never look back at your pages and be critical of them (without gessoing over them) and learning from those pages what are you missing out on. If you focus on nothing but making pretty pretty pages I think you're missing out on a very important part of art journaling.

Here's a challenge: Go through your art journal, either the current journal you're working in or a recent one. Use a sharpie, write on the margins of a page what you'd change on that page. If you are too chicken you can use a post it note. If you get bold, draw right on top of the page with your sharpie.

Out of the Can Thinking

I've been watching some old episodes of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home on Hulu. I grew up watching Julia Child on PBS. PBS being one of the few channels that came in and was approved for me to watch. I credit a lot of my enjoyment of cooking to both my Mom and ravenously watching Julia Child's shows.

One of the things I notice as I watch J&J:CaH is that Julia rambles on quite a bit about how Americans are afraid of their food and how the diet industry is winning out over taste. Secretly, I could watch these shows over and over again.

Julia has a good lesson for us, and it applies to art. We can't let the industry win in dictating what we want and how we want it. Child's recipes for successful tasty dishes included fresh and basic ingredients combined in ways to create layers of food, she poo-poo'd using canned foods and already made stuff. She stated over and over, "It's not hard, the recipe is a guideline!" Art and art journaling are no different. We should be demanding the basic ingredients and supplies we need to make our art and not canned supplies. After all it's not hard to customize and create your own stuff if you only

Dede and Eveline are a prime example of taking a recipe and making it their own and taking it to entirely new heights. Dede put out a challenge to Eve that she make Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas without using his voluminous list of supplies. Eve took up the challenge as did Dede. their results are nothing short of spectacular. Out of the can thinking at it's finest.

The art and craft industry responds to demands, but as it's a big slow and lumbering machine full of people all trying to get the NEXT BIG IDEA and thus the next big paycheck. The lumbering machine hears about art journaling, tries to figure out what it is, there are big IMPORTANT meetings in board rooms to try and figure it out, there are more meetings in board rooms, and hapless cogs in the machine are sent off to investigate ART JOURNALING. They know nothing about it, they watch a few youtube videos, read a few blogs, and maybe a few of the more intrepid cogs join AJNing. They take some notes, maybe even dabble in a little art journaling and finally something like the Smash Book is born.

Now, thousands of people will be introduced to Art Journaling via the SmashBook. It might even be a decent product, but it's not what I consider a true art journal. It's an interesting concept and an interesting way to finally grab hold of a potential market. Hey, it's even got it's own special glue stick, color coordinated tabs, and a hundred other things to buy to go with it. ARGH!!!

Go simple, buy yourself a sketchbook, a cheap one, a few markers, maybe a cheap set of acrylics or watercolors, and start splashing shit around on the page. Try stuff, watch some videos on youtube get a few recipes but for goodness sake don't be afraid to only use it as a guideline.

 

Weekly Round Up: Videos

This week's videos are late because I had an Art Adventure on a super warm winter day! Cappuccino, breakfast sandwiches, walking around the city of Salem, and of course sketching. (Also planning for a new secret project or two destined to hit awesomeness this coming summer.)

So here you go this week's videos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal Flip: Moleskine #3

I started this journal the spring before I found out that a family member was going to need emergency open heart surgery and have her aeortic valve replaced. I found out that August and the surgery occured in November. Not long after finding out I ordered a new journal, the happy summer drawings and paintings didn't seem to fit with the down and somewhat sad theme that seemed to pop up.

I've never bothered to go back and fill the remaining pages. I don't think it would fit with the journal. Sometimes it's time to simply move onto a new journal and start fresh. It's okay to simply move on.

 

Papers I've Been Using

I've been testing out a variety of papers for my automatic drawings. I'm not being very scientific about this, just trying things out with my style of working. I have done a large amount of them in a Canson Universal Sketchbook. It's a great sketchbook, the paper is sturdy and accepts light washes with ease. The paper cockles when I use more watercolor. With ink it's perfect.

So I taped down some pieces of Canson XL Bristol. I like this for ink too, in fact of all the papers the ink really pops off this page. It's bright white and after watercolors dry the paper is smooth and flat. It's really great but I didn't like how watercolors behaved on it's surface. It was absorbent and dried very fast.

Next up I tried another Canson paper, Montval, not or rough watercolor paper. It's one of my favorites with watercolor. I love the nooks and crannies of it's rough surface, it makes watercolors blend in amazing ways. Ink also looks great on it, but the pen tends to skip across it's surface. It's a little harder to draw on than the other papers. When it dries, it's perfectly flat.

I think what I'll end up using is a cold pressed watercolor paper. The hard part with this whole thing is that I never know what I'm in the mood for, I let these images grow organicly and the end result is that I never know if I'm going to cross hatch the hell out of an image or flood the page with watercolor, so I need something that can handle both.

Weekly Round Up of Videos

I usually post these on Saturday but with it being New Year's eve and me doing nothing... I forgot. So any who, here you go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watercolor Play Experiments

I've been using watercolors for close to 20 years now. It's crazy when you thinkg about it. The first 5 years or so of using watercolors, I hated them. I used them primarily to add a toned color to a sketchbook, large flat washes of one color, let it dry then draw. Lovely.

Then about 10 years ago I decided I was going to master them. I never did. What I did do is learn how to use them better. I learned how to layer colors, be patient and let one layer dry before floating another over it.

I also learned to love the happy accidents, like the things you see in my current videos.

I learned to give up control and get beutiful results.

I get messages on youtube where people ask me, "How do you do this? Where did you learn this?" The video below is my answer.

 

The truth is, you have to give up control. You have to be willing to get something ugly to get something that really is beautiful. Sometimes in the midst of the ugly is just one spot that speaks to you and will motivate you to create more. Then you try again and again and again and find more beauty, and beauty in colors you'd never have combined before.

I don't usually use the word play, I prefer experiment, test, and try. The truth is that when I use those words with other people they give me a look like it's scary. If I cay play, suddenly we're out of science class (I forget I was a geek and loved science class.) and back in the area of playful experimentation where we can leave behind our concious thoughts and truly try things out. So get in there and play.

Work in Progress

I've been working on an art piece for a family friend over the last few days. The first part of the process was getting my first idea onto the page.

Then I did a little research and looked at a lot of photos of lotus flowers. I sketched out more ideas from there.

I looked at the sketches I came up with and picked the best looks out of each one and combined them into one full sketch.

I sketched that out and then added ink to the page and then put in the first layers of watercolor. I purposefully made the colors pale.

The colors are a touch too warm in this image but I added another layer of the quin magenta. I think the person it's intended for will really love it.

Blanket of White

I woke after my 6 hour drive to a blanket of snow.

Review: Exacompta Plain Journal

 

I was given the Exacompta plain (unruled) journal to review by Karen and Stephanie of Exaclaire,the US distributor for Clairfontaine and a variety of other French stationary products. I like to put journals through a few paces before I do a review and since it took me a full year to get through my last journal, it’s been awhile.

The paper is off white, a very nice cream color that I really like a lot. The paper is laid textured on one side and much smoother on the other side. For some this would be a detraction, personally I like it very much and feel it opens the journal up for a variety of media I wouldn’t normally consider. Dry media does much better than expected- things like charcoal and soft pencil really like that laid texture. Though it is textured fountain pens love it’s surface.

Wet media also does admirably on this paper. I was pleasantly surprised when I soaked the paper down with water and color that it held up. It didn’t just hold up, it out performed the luxury of the Rhodia Webnotebook. When it dried the wrinkles (cockles) relaxed. While the paper is not perfectly smooth it’s less cockled than I’d have expected. I was able to lay down a nice wash of watercolor on BOTH sides of the page and have not one drop show through or soak through to the reverse side. That is pretty amazing.

Even my wettest writing pens don’t soak through. Occasionally you can see dark colors through the pages, but that is the case with most any journal. I’ve painted pages with ink and it doesn’t soak through to the reverse side, which again, is pretty amazing. I haven’t been interested in doing any collage in this but I’m sure it would take to it well.

In summary:
100 Laid Textured Ivory pages 100gsm
5.5x8.5 inches
Ribbon Marker
Soft Covers with a fabric spine, meant to go inside a leather cover, many companies make them
Price $15.50 at gouletpens.com

It handles wet media like a champ and is wonderful for a fountain pen. Pencil does amazing textural things on the textured side but doesn’t smudge as much as would be expected on the smooth side.

It’s not cheap but it’s a better value than the moleskine sketchbook, it’s got more papges that behave better and respond better. I’d rate this 2 happy thumbs up and would recomend it to anyone looking to get a nice journal that they can write in, sketch ink, test watercolors in, and abuse.

Marizateria working hard at hardly working

ARGH This is so awesome. I love her pages so much. Go check out her channel and subscribe. Her journaling exemplifies life. Also Watercolor pencils? Too cool!

 

 

Art Experiments: In Search of a Gray Ink

 I've been workingon the automatic drawings, and one of the directions I've wanted to take them is to use a very fine pen with a nice gray ink as the first layer of the drawing. I considered using pencil but really don't want to be able to erase the lines. Part of the automatic process is that the lines stay from start to finish. I wanted to use the gray ink with my extra fine RapidoCraft pen to get a fine hairline that fades into the background when a darker color is put of the top.

I searched the network's archives to see if I could find a gray ink that fulfilled my needs. I found a few reviews, but gray inks don't seem to be too popular. I then went to Gouletpens.com and checked out their swab shop tool to see the colors of the grays they had in stock. Still nothing definitive. Instead I ordered 5 samples of gray colors. Each was from a different brand and most I'd seen mentioned at some point on the network.

The 5 colors I ordered were:

    Omas New Gray
    Private Reserve Gray Flannel
    Diamine Grey
    Noodler's Lexinton Grey
    Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun

And my 4 needs are:

    That it survive being wet and not bleed too profusely. A distinct line must remain.
    It not foul pale watercolors like yellow.
    It not foul shades of blue, turning them muddy or green
    It recede to the background when black is put over the top in a drawing.

I performed a test on each of these criteria with each ink on 3 types of paper:

    Clairefontaine Graf It
    Canson Universal Sketch 65lb
    Exacompta Plain Journal

The results were the same across all papers, though with the Graf It there was additional lifting across the inks when lifting was noted.

Diamine Grey was too dark to be a grey I would use for my drawings and it lifted the worst of all the inks.

Private Reserve Gray Flannel was also too dark for my use. I can't say that I actually like this color either. It has a green cast to it that I do not enjoy. It was also the second worst for fouling the pale watercolors. It was also barely discernible from black.

Noodler's Grey was the only ink that did not lift at all. Thus colors floated over it's surface and were not fouled nor muddied. However, it is very dark when in a pen running wet. It might be a contender if it were in a dry pen. I will be loading this into my  freshly cleaned RapidoCraft XF to see if it will work. I'm not convinced. It does hands down win on every other test.

Iroshizuku Fuyu-syogun was a good shade that is easily discernible from an overlay of black. It did lift, though not badly. It slightly muddied the pale colors, though not too badly. I really like the color. It does not fit the bill because it is too blue. It's also REALLY expensive.

The perfect shade of gray is the Omas New Gray. It perfectly matches the pale silvery line of pencil. It's clearly gray without a green tinge or looking like I added a bunch of water to my black ink. It's just a cool clear gray. It's pale on the page and black ink pops on top of it. It does however lift. It muddies the pale yellow but mixes well with the pale blue. Even when it does lift it leaves behind a discernible line.

I have one last test. It will require me to leave the inks on the page over night to see if time will allow them to bond with the paper more. Given how I work the more immediate test is the better indicator of how the ink will respond to me and my methods of working but the additional information will be useful. Click any of the images to see these tests in hi-res glory.

The above images is the Canson Universal Sketch paper.

This is the Clairefontaine Graft It pad.

This is the Exactompta plain journal.(review on this to come.)

 

Millande's Doodle Breakfast

A nice way tot start the day- sketching with breakfast. If you've never seen MIllande's YT channel you're missing out, she's got some great art journaling tutorials.

 

Under the Waves

Noodlers Heart of Darkness and Nikita on sketch paper.

Die cuts, tea and friends

My friend Jane and I go on what I term "Art Adventures" every other weekend. This weekend she wanted to see my set up for shooting videos and so she did. She'd also been itching to see the cricut machine in action. We drank tea, talked and drew together. I shot a automatic drawing video with her present (that was a first) and told her what I was doing with the set up, start to finish.

After that we got on the computer and I did a little video editing- sandwich method style (aka using my own template) and we dug out the cricut.

While she was here we talked about the endless possibilities that Makes the Cut gives to the cricut (Don't worry I gave her a primer on the evils of the litigious overlord ProvoCrap) and stuck a RapidoCraft in there. From there it snowballed, more ideas, and more. I'm telling you, it was great, I looked at the cricut and MTC with new ideas.

After that I cut these- gears of my own design, 100%, not Tim Holtz's but mine. Using MTC  I combined basic shapes to get these.

YouTube Find: hyperion311

I'm really digging the style in these art journals. Sketches, doodles, experiements, personal ephemera; all the stuff I think belongs in an art journal are there. Check it out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woman on FIre on vimeo

I"ve posted stuff by woman on fire before but I just found this video and I hadn't seen it. So here it is.

book 21.2 (july 1994 - winter 1994) from womanonfire on Vimeo.

 

Sketchbook Notebook whatever

This is how it starts, one day you forget your notebook for class and all you've got is your sketchbook so you take notes in it, you decide you like the look and suddenly an art journal is born.

sketchbook cambiose from raquel pinheiro on Vimeo.

sketchbook dragão da maldade from raquel pinheiro on Vimeo.

sketchbook from raquel pinheiro on Vimeo.