ArtiphyTheHeart

Doodling With Collage

 

Not too long ago, Diana Trout published her book: Journal Spilling: Mixed-Media Techniques for Free Expression.  While my pages aren't really Diana's style of pages, I do feel like I've spilled it all, all over the page.

Some of the pages in my diary-style art journal are simply made up of random bits of stuff like doodles in a phone book.  Doodling with everything: pens, markers, even the collage.  

Sometimes these books end up a lot like the books in high school, when you doodled around the pictures and text in notebooks and then stuck stickers in the book and glued, stapled and taped stuff on top of it all.  Totally unplanned.  Spilling it all on the page for no other reason than to put it there.  Nothing's really finished in these books, nor is it unfinished either.  It's just there.

Perhaps what I've done with the pages of this book is more along the lines of K&Company Smash 365 Folio style.  But I've been doing this for years and years and years in books I've made by hand, and Smash books are a new product that's partially already put together.  With Smash books, you don't so much make it, as finish it.  Still, I think they're a lot of fun, and I think I probably want one.

  At any rate, the pages above are from the same book as the page in yesterday's post.  

When I make books, I make so many books.  So many radically different styles, bindings, and designs.  Some are serious, some are whimsical, and some can't be catagorized at all, and they don't need to be.  But sometimes it helps to have one book for one thing, and one book for another.  Any way you look at it, it all adds up to lots of books.  Containers, really.  Containers of artistic expression.  This book is a container for the doodles of my life, and most of those doodles are bits of collage.

A Page From Last Summer

This is one of the journaled pages from my third sewn-on-tapes book.  I've included it as an example of a typical page from the journals which I design specifically to use diary-style.  

The focal images I choose for these journals are usually more abstract and are rarely images of people.  I often combine many different patterns, papers, images, and colors, but do so with an idea toward cleaner lines and plenty of white space, which often fills with writing in the end, but sometimes is left alone.

The pink paper lace trim and the bit of a fish's tail you can see to the right are peeking through from other pages.  The pieces of pages that show through are not planned to happen, but when they do, I make it a policy never to change or remove them.  Ever.  Not because it's right or wrong.  Just because I can, and that's what I want to do--until I change my mind and decide to do it otherwise.

Are you understanding my point?  For me, it's all about the moment at hand, which I belive is the essence of a diary-style journal:  A place to record moments, as they are thought of, and as they occur and are lived.

This book is presently 1/2 filled with journaling.  All the pages were pieced and collage-prepped in advance.  That doesn't mean they were ready-made for immediate journaling.  

Often when I work in books chronologically such as this one, I'll come to a page whose images don't fit the day or the mood, or aren't what I want.  When that happens, the entire page might be redone.  Not by ripping, removing or tearing out, but by pasting and/or painting over.  This rarely occurs, however.  It's really funny--eerie, even--how the page I arrive upon on any particular date seems to contain elements, colors, shapes, etc. that actually point to the day at hand in some way or other.  But when things don't click, they're changed.  Nothing's too precious to alter.  What's precious is the process.  And because of that, so is each finished product.

 

The Everyday Things

The page above is from one of my "Everyday" journals.

I keep several visual journals for different types of things.  A couple of them, like the pages I posted yesterday and the day before, are introspective and deal with thoughts and issues.  This page is more fun/utilitarian.  It's pretty much a chronology of what-happened-when, so it's on the lighter side.  Every once in a while a particularly heavy day will creep into the book and I'll let loose.  But for the most part, it's just a who, what, where, when, why.  

If you're interested, you can see the covers and the binding by clicking HERE.

Here's one more page from this book.  

A card in a magazine I was flipping through inspired my St. Lucy, so I had to draw her.  I was on an art date with my friend Rita and the only plain paper I had with me was a sketchbook that was not meant for water media, as you might be able to tell from the scratched up fibers in the background.  Once I figured this out, I decided to collage St. Lucy and outline her with my Rapidosketch.  This worked much better.  

All the pages in this book were pieced together from various papers and images before the signatures were sewn into the book.  The duck and cranberries (they're really jelly candies, but let's pretend they're cranberries...) on the page at the top were already there when the book was bound months ago.  So were the papers and the red bench in the second picture.  It happens so often that what's already on the page lends itself perfectly to the theme of the day.  It isn't planned.  It just happens that way.  

Before

I don't know if I'll post an "after" of this page.  That will depend on what I write.  These journals are for me and I write things which I'd like to re-read and remember, not things I want to cover up afterward or blur in Photoshop for the web, although I have done that on occasion. 

I love working in the books that I've bound with sewn-on tapes.  They aren't copic bound, but they lay flat when opened just like a copic stitched book.  A delight.  If you are interested in learning to bind these, click HERE.  Mary Ann Moss teaches the binding as book one of her Full Tilt Boogie class. You can see the outside of my book and how I bound it by clicking HERE.

And on another subject, I have a book to recommend: The Encaustic Studio: A Wax Workshop in Mixed-Media Art by Daniella Woolf.  I'm not an encaustic artist.  I took a workship in college and I found that I really don't care for melting things, working with hot tools, etc.  But this book is so very beautiful that even if you don't work in encaustic and aren't interested in learning it, it's still one of the most wonderful things you could add to your collection.  There's much information inside about so many aspects of art aside from the wax work.  And if you are interested in the medium, then wow, you need it!  Beautifully written and beautifully presented.

 

 

Inside Cover

Here's the inside cover of the newest journal I'm working in.  You can see how I bound the book and what it looks like on the outside by clicking HERE.

 

Lateral Purple

Here's my newest book.  I love the square format because it gives the option of working one square page or working rectangular 2 page spreads.  Purple is not a color I automatically run to, but I do love it depending on how it is used and I think it worked very well for the outside of the book. Especially with the upholstery fabric I chose for the tapes.  

This is a 14 signature book, and while you might think that the inside pages would be purple by looking at the spine, they aren't.  I covered the spine of each signature with a special purple tape prior to construction, and with each signature glued to the next, the signature spines are hidden from the inside of the book.  When you open the book and flip through it, you see only pages.  

Every bit of this book was designed and constructed by hand.  The covers are painted and stenciled canvas, hand stretched over hand cut boards.  Even the colors were carefully mixed to produce just the right shades of purple and indigo, further enhanced through multiple layer glazing.  Each page (to be shown in a later post) was hand-pieced from a carefully chosen array of papers. The tapes were cut, reinforced and edge-stitched.  

All these steps took significantly less time than previous books with fewer steps and less attention to detail.  Why?  Practice!  The more you do, the faster and better you become at procducing work of increasing quality.  

It pays to jump around, learning and practicing lots and lots of things.  I firmly advocate doing and trying as much as is humanly possible and not harmful.  But (there's always a caveat), when you find something you love, do it over, and over, and over, and over!  Find every possible pleasing variation.  Go for quality.  Go for numbers.  Go for variety.  Tweak it.  Then tweak it again.  

It's good to practice art vertically, building knowledge on top of knowledge, and technique on top of techniqe.  But this should never take the place of, or be done at the expense of working laterally.  When you find something that you love and that interests you passionately, you must take that thing you love and work again and again, producing variation upon variation, until you've milked the last drop of ingenuity and variety that your heart and soul has to put into it.  Then it's time to move on to something else.  

Of course this shouldn't be done at the beginning.  A foundation of tools, techniques and experience should always precede any serious attempt at a lateral series, unless you don't mind being mediocre.  I personally would hate to taste a variety of souflees made by a chef who didn't own a whisk, had no idea how to properly whip air into eggs, and was content to feed his concoctions only to those who didn't know better.  But for me personally, I like knowing better.  And I enjoy the study, practice, time, patience and experience it requires.  I also enjoy people who think it's a valuable thing to acquire these virtues and are passionate about it.  But then I enjoy people and art, so enough said!

The Last Page--And Something Added

Today I finally scanned and uploaded the final page to my first art journal with the sewn-on tabs binding taught by Mary Ann Moss in her Full Tilt Boogie class.  You can see more of that book by clicking HERE, and at the end of the flip-thru video on that post you can see what this page looked like before anything was added to it.  

I began this journal last year on the fourth of July for no other reason than that is when I finished binding the book, and I journaled the last page this year on Memorial Day, for no other reason than it happened to be that weekend when I got to the last page.

I'm still working in multiple journals at once, but I must admit that I have more fun with this style than most of the others.  They all serve different purposes, but this is the one I work in chronological order.  I'll be sharing pages from the newest journal soon, so be ready for it!  It's a bit smaller than this one, but the style and the binding are similar.

And now a drumroll, please!

I've added another blog to "My Other Blogs" list on the sidebar.  This is significant since I've always kept this blog separate, it's not a typepad blog--it's a blogger blog, and it's all about cards, templates, die cuts, and crafty stuff artfully designed and arranged.  I haven't added to that blog since 2009, but I've decided to ressurect it because I've fallen in love with making .svg files (scalable vector graphics) in Inkscape, turning them into die cuts with SCAL software, then cutting them.  I've also fallen in love with scanning my own line drawings as well as creating them in Inkscape and also using line drawings from other sources, adding pattern, color, shadow, etc. in Photoshop, then printing to use as custom images for hand cuts and diecuts.  So be sure to stop by ArtyCards'NCrafts.  You can get there by clicking HERE, or by clicking on ArtyCards'NCrafts on my sidebar.  

And soon there will be even more news to share with you, so come back often!  You can subscribe to this blog, or to any of my blogs by clicking on the rss widget or "subscribe to this blog" and adding that blog to your feed reader.  If you don't have a feed reader, you might want to get one.  It took me years to figure out how much easier it was to see new posts on the blogs I want to keep up with by using a reader.  I use google reader, but there are lots of others out there and they're all free, so check it out and take your pick!  

A Handbound Book, Start To Finish

Here's a pic of my latest book:

My friend and art partner Rita loves Canson mixed-media paper and in watching her work with it, I've noticed how well it takes wet media and glue without buckling.  It's also smooth and bright white which I like for most drawing and illustration work.  It holds its fibers and keeps them out of my Rapidograph, so it's the paper I chose for the signatures in this book.  

I wanted the spine to harmonize seamlessly with my painted canvas covers.  I found patterned paper that worked well for this purpose, cut 1" wide strips and glued them to the spine of the outside folio of each signature.  More than just aesthetic, this adds bulk to the spine so the book will close flat even after media is added.  And because I glued the outside signature of each folio to the next outside signature as each was sewn, the decorative spines are present only on the outside of the book, not the inside, providing me with a book of pure white pages.

Cover:

I cut museum board to size and painted the canvas to cover the boards with multiple layers of thinned, transparent acrylics.  This was my first time using commercial modeling (or molding, depending on the brand you use) paste.  I tinted it first, then spackled it over a stencil of squares using a palette knife, lifted the stencil and left it to dry for a couple of days.  I liked the texture, so I left it as-is instead of sanding it to a smooth finish, then I adjusted the color.  

Spine:

A more detailed view of the spine shows the book with the back cover, and a closer view of the tapes.  I haven't decided whether or not I'll go back in with a little walnut ink to cover the exposed white edges of the holes for the stitching.

 

Tapes:

 The tapes began as end strips of upholstery fabric which  
were chosen for their color alone, as pictured (right).  But after prepping the strips for book tapes, I realized that the color was a bit off.  The left strip in the picture is the fabric before sewing. To correct this, I randomly and haphazardly machine stitched over the tape with a copper brown thread.  The middle tape in the picture illustrates the tapes at this stage.  To coordinate with the color of the covers and the spine, I added a powdery teal thread, and kept adding copper and teal threads alternatively until I felt that the fibers gave the fabric the color it needed to harmonize effectively.  The end product is the third tape on the right. 

Construction:

I constructed the book as part of a project in the Affair With Art group I belong to.  Nancy wrote a set of beautiful instructions for us and posted them to her blog HERE. Her instructions called for leather tapes and a closure, but I preferred to use what I had on hand.  I also tweaked the instructions a bit and bound the book per the specs for book #1 of Full Tilt Boogie, a perpetual online workshop, which I highly recommend, given by Mary Ann Moss.  The end product looks similar to the AAWA book, but differs just a bit in the way it was put together and the materials used. 

Inside Cover:

I really wanted to use the same paper I cut for the spine, as endpapers inside the book.  But with more than one signature, I had to come up with a way to attach a single sheet of paper to the front of the first signature and to the back of the last.  It worked because of the strips I attached to the spines of those signatures.  I simply glued these pages to the inside of the strip in such a way that the wrong side of the paper faced outward.  The signature then had one additional piece of paper, which after the book was sewn, was glued wrong-side-down to the inside cover as an endpaper.  When the book is opened, it looks like this:

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'll be binding 100 books in 2012 with the Artists Of The Round Table.  Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden, is the book we are using.   If you are interested in hand binding books, you'll want to add this to your library!

Eight and Nine

Yesterday I decided to remake a page.  Actually, I do this almost every day.  It isn't about whether or not I like what's on the page, it's about putting what I happen to want on the page today, and reconciling that with what's already there.  I could start with a blank page.  In fact, I do that all the time.  I've heard people say that blank pages can be intimidating.  I've also heard people say that pages with too much stuff on them can be confusing.  Since I'm neither intimidated nor confused, it really doesn't matter to me whether the page is blank, or full.  Either way, to me it's a just substrate.  

Here's the semi-finished product--semi-finished, because it hasn't been written upon yet. The pages are really not wonderful until they've been written on, so this one still has a long way to go.

 The page was remade primarily with paint, and a pine tree that I drew and carved into a stamp several years ago.  "Road-tested" was clipped from a magazine and used as-is.  "High Altitude" was constructed from white rub-on letters on top of a piece of black magazine paper cut to fit the top. The road and date were drawn onto the page with a Rapidograph and Inda ink.  

For remade pages, much of the the beauty is simply that what's under the finished product lends so much to the final outcome, both texturally, and in meaning, that the page wouldn't at all have been the same if what's underneath hadn't been there in the first place.

 Here's what was underneath the page above when I started:

If you look closely, and maybe squint, you can see some of the dots and part of that smilely face underneath the finshed page.  I didn't remove a thing.  Even the brown grid tape was laid on top of the pink tape that was already there, which added to the color of the tape layer on top.  

I use art journals and sketchbooks to stretch my creative muscles.  Sometimes that means sketching out plans.  Sometimes it means glueing-in a lot of things that please me.  Things which might contain elements I'll want to use in a finished piece later.  Sometimes it's all about color, and making notes.  

This particular book was made for Mary Ann Moss's Full Tilt Boogie workshop, and I've been working in it since mid-summer.  I'm using it to stretch my conscious creative decision making.  I say conscious, because so many of the decisions we make are habitual and shortcut the thought process.  This book is full of pages patched together alongside full blank pages, alongside pages with other elements added.  If you'd like to see what the book looked like just after it was created and before I started working on the pages, there's a flip-through you can see by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the bottom of the page.

Speaking of other elements, I drew some of those today to use later.  I've used quite a few frames on other pages of this book, and really like how they can be used to confine and define select words and design elements, so I drew a couple of funky frames with a wide-tipped Sharpie to have on hand for future pages, one on plain paper, and one on patterned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That takes care of Days 8 and 9 of Traci Bunker's 30 Days of Drawing.  A great incentive to keep pencil to paper, and to post about it.  It's not too late to join the challenge.

Thirty Of Thirty

Another page in my FTB Handbook.  I have no idea where it's going, but I'm happy with the start.

This may be the 30th day of Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Get Your Art On, but it won't be the final day of my getting my art on.  I plan to continue with this as often as possible.  They say it takes 40 days to make a habit.  If that's true, then I'm just ten short days away from a daily art blogging habit, and I love it.  

I've learned quite a bit about myself, the way I work, what works for me and what works against me over this last month.  

Years ago, I kept a sketchbook that contained notes, and a notebook that contained sketches, and that was all.  Then I discovered hand-binding my own books, and I used most of them as containers for my collaged poster-like pages that contain both images and words, which are what most people refer to today as art journals, I guess.  

I plan to keep on doing more of the same.  But I'm definitely going back to the notebooks with sketches and the sketchbooks with notes, as well.  I need a daily record of the obvious and mundane, and I need a place to keep working notes of what I'm doing.  I find a ruled notebook works best for me for this function.   I also need the traditional sketchbook that contains drawings and renderings primarily, but also notes, blobs of paint, and whatever else needs to be there.  And I need a place to do some deep, soul level journaling.  A place to dig out the symbolic and interpret it.  I find a large altered or hand-bound book works best for me when this is how I'm working.  And I need a place to create symbolic artwork, to collage and illustrate themes.  Hand-bound books are great for this function, too.  They are also great for any variety of themed journals, such as the journals I keep specifically for Mandalas and for SoulCollage®.  

 So I see books in my future.  Many, many books.  And not just books for artwork, but books to read, also.  One of the great Sumi-e masters suggested that an artist's work day should be nine hours long, divided by thirds.  One third of the day should be spent reading, another third should be spent seeing, and the final third should be spent painting.  That would leave three hours for recreation and meals, 6 days a week with one day off.  I am not often able to stick to that schedule because of the fragmented lifestyle of western civilization.  But at the times when I have been able to do this, it was ideal, and the creativity was unparalleled! 

Twenty-five And Twenty-six

This week is extraordinarily busy.  Tomorrow is full from early morning into the late evening, and Thursday and Friday are completely booked, almost around the clock.  I'm packing an art bag now, because whatever I do, it will be done on the go.  To make it all work, today had to be productive, and it was.  I got a lot done!  But there's more to do, so I'll leave you with the pages in my FTB HandBook for yesterday and today:

Only five days left of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  I'm really thinking about extending it into August....which I guess would make August One the first day of ArtiphyTheHeart Keeping The Art On...?

Today's Pages, And A Cool Event In Hot Phoenix

Not counting today, there are only six more days left of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  So far, so good.  It's never a good idea to get too confident when you're closing in on the finish line.  You never know what's coming up from behind.  So rather than smugly patting myself on the back and taking a break, I'm getting back to work.  

These are the pages I did over the weekend in my FTB HandBook.

It is another hot July in Phoenix!  But if you're in the area, you'll want to stop by Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on Wednesday evening July 27, at 7PM and attend the launch party for Quinn McDonald's new book,Raw Art Journaling.  Quinn will be on hand to autograph copies of her book, and it's cool inside!

Trust me, you're going to want this book!  And you're going to want to have it on hand in time for Quinn's online class.  The class is free, but you will need a copy of the book to follow along. 

What I love most about this book is that it covers a lot of the journaling part of art journaling.  The writing, drawing and doodling part.  There are plenty of great books around that instruct in mixed media background techniques, layouts, and the placement of collage and focal images.  But most of them only touch the surface when it comes to the actual marks you make on the pages, and the creative mindset behind what you put on the page from start to finish .Raw Art Journaling is all about the marks and the words on the page, how to think them up creatively, how to make them, how to keep the ideas flowing, how to make them stand out, and how to hide them when you need the privacy.  And there's a lot more, too.  

A few weeks back when I received my contributor's copy, I sat down to flip through it.  A couple of hours later I realized I had just read it from cover to cover.  I've been back to it four times since, and for me, it counts as great reference material.  Now that I know where everything is in the book, I can zero in on the section that answers the questions I face from day to day.

Raw Art Journaling is available on Amazon now, and also at local book stores.  It's brand new, so if you don't see it on the shelves, ask your bookseller to order it.

Hmmmmmm.....

My brain is fried and my mojo's on vacation.  I spent the day sorting neutrals trying to decide what to fill the *smash* with, but in the end, all I came up with was a cluttered table.  

So I'm back in the HandBook, and I have no idea where this is going.  But anything's better than nothing, and I've made it through 20 days of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  Some things are better left for another day.  I'll be making a wine cooler, joining some friends on turntable, and taking it easy.  Tomorrow's another day.  

Back To The Book. Day 19

I can't keep my nose out of books.  Any books.  But especially, my HandBook.  So while I was ready to put signatures together for yesterday's book, the pages in my first FTB book were crying out to worked on.

You may recognize a handful of the images from the pile I cut a few days ago.  Things I cut never make it into my work so rapidly.  They usually sit for months.  Sometimes longer.  But I'm free to make the rules and change them as I go.  Working without ultimate restrictions is important for everyone, I think.  For me it's imperative.  And the intermediate restrictions I impose upon myself for the sake of order, well, they're mine to keep or break as I see fit.  

I've made it through day 19 of Traci Bunker's 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  It's working so well for me that I just may extend it to 40, then 50...  No promises.  Just thinking out loud.

Day 18, And It's A Smash!

In true Mary Ann style, extra goodies were added to the program at FTB.  So on day 18 of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On, I decided to go from first to last, and leave the other three books in the middle for now.   This means that I've finished my first book and I'm currently working the pages inside of it, and I am working on my second book, but I have put all this on temporary hold to make the final, extra book.  

I wanted it extra large.  The biggest thing I could find on hand was a back issue of "W" that I got a couple of years ago.  It's 10" X 13".  I successfully removed the cover, spine in tact, from the glued magazine block.  Don't ask how.  It worked, and I don't want to jinx it.  Like most issues of "W", the front cover is just a bit shorter than the back, and it's a gatefold cover, so it has a full size flap that folds in.  I used it all.  Here's my finished book, although it unfortunately doesn't show the inside flap, and below are some before and after shots.

The cover, after:

and before.  See how the cover is just a bit shorter than the magazine block itself...

The inside with the cover flap folded in, after:

and before, cover only, magazine block removed...

The insides, flap opened out, after:

and before...

Last but not least, the back cover, after:

I forgot to take a before shot of the back, but by now I'm sure you get the idea.  Unlike the front cover, the back cover extends 1/4" beyond the magazine block. Quite a transformation, yes?  

Tomorrow I'll put together the pages and stitch the text block, but now, in honor of my good friend Rosie's latest piece of artwork, it's Piña Colada time!