{a new art journal page in pinks, blues and purples}
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{a new art journal page in pinks, blues and purples}
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an excerpt
the full page
the back of the collage, showing the roads intersecting on each side of the waterway
8x11" black paper, stitched mixed media collage
This map was inspired by a map of Poland that I was studied before starting this process. My vision was the body of water being formed by the collage. A body of water and roads running alongside, and added bridges from my imagination.
I've always loved maps, and reading Jill Berry's book Personal Geographies
Have you seen the carefully curated list of books I recommend in Art Journaling 101? Personal Geographies and Journal Junkies Workshop have just been added to the list!
]]>El Parquesito Creativo: A Little Spot for Creativity
{PS. I'm developing a new workshop which will be dedicated to creating journal fodder and art journal pages, stay tuned!}
♥ CLICK ABOVE TO REGISTER ♥
SCHEDULE: The workshop materials will be available 24/7 throug March 31, 2012. Create at your own pace, in your own space, on your own schedule.
FORUM: Participants have access to a super duper top secret discussion forum. This is a positive, supportive space to ask questions, get feedback & meet other creative people. There's also a private Flickr group to share your artwork or work-in-process, if you wish.
FEE: The fee is $39 USD {non-refundable}
REGISTRATION & MATERIAL LIST: Registration is open through February 15, 2012. After payment is sorted out, I'll send a confirmation, art material list and workshop access instructions to the email address in your paypal profile within 1 day.
QUESTIONS: Contact Me
8x11" art journal page, black paper
Wouldn't it be cool to have a wire-bound spy notebook to carry wherever I go, a spot for all of the ideas not documented. To squeeze in all of the random thoughts. For little disorganized notes now in journals, manilla folders, sidebars, margins, voice notes, slips of paper, post-it notes... and the backs of envelopes. I have this uneasy feeling knowing that all of these little papers and words are not maintained in any cohesive format. I feel like they are flaying about in the wind, uncaptured. I'd feel so much better if I pulled them all together, but that would entail a treasure hunt around the house, peeking in books and drawers and thumbing through journals. Some day?
For this page, I stitched teeny tiny scraps of fabric on the machine, imagining them as little scraps of ideas. The journaling is in white gelly roll. Do you know All About Gelly Rolls?
I started a new flickr group called Art Journal Pages {Unbound} for posting your loose art journal pages, not in any binding or journal. Art journal pages on watercolor paper, cardboard, canvas.
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page one
pg. 2, an introductory mandala
pg. 3, brainstormed lots of color names
work in progress
pg. 4
pg. 5, testing 5 inks {j. herbin bleu pervenche, doc ph martin's bombay black, j. herbin cafe des iles, rouge opera, ambre de birmanie}, all very smooth and silky on this paper, i liked all but rouge opera {too pale on this paper, lush on whiter paper}
pg. 6, don't know if this is finished or not
The Rhodia webbie has creamy white dotted paper and a soft orange leatherette cover.
There are 12 Rhodia webbie journals traveling around the states. Twelve folks diligently filling pages with all sorts of creative fodder. So I am starting with a blank journal this month; I'll fill about 7 pages and mail it off to the next person. Another participant will mail me the journal they start. So my JOURNAL #1 starts here. There's a tumblr blog for the Rhodia Swap if you want to follow the journal pages posted by the participants.
{i am going to update this post until I finish the 7.5 pages for february, to do one post per month}
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At six flags, I noticed the crisp leaves in the winter sun, and the rainbow array of holiday lights above the fence.
An idea launches an inkling of possibility, a spark, an unfinished thought. But ideas need time to simmer, to swirl around in drifts and somersaults.
Waiting for a traffic light, a window under the eaves of an old house catches your eye. The glass panes look like mirrors reflecting the afternoon sun.
Playing Yahtzee, you notice how four dice kind of look like panes of glass in a window.
A periwinkle sunset makes you wonder how to mix that exact color.
Your mind put together the random things you noticed.
What we create is a magical mix of everything that our mind takes in, jumbles up.
What escapes onto the page is our art.
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{i wanted to share what's going on in the sewing room}
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5x8" watercolor moleskine, watercolor
Welcome to my adventure in map making. More maps of cities where grids are few and the streets follow the natural geography of hills and rivers. The watercolor moleskine is perfect. Really. No warping, vivid watercolor paints, luscious paper for drawing or painting. A very different experience than my experiments in the sketch moleskine.
To get the lines really super sharp, I "painted" them with blue frisket {technically Schminke blue masking fluid} which comes in a bottle with a tip for drawing. Then I painted with watercolor and after everything was dry, peeled off the frisket. The lines are ready for journaling, writing street names, still pondering what is next!
As I shared in Map Love Madness and Map Love Madness No. 2, I'm reading Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking
Pick your work surface: Do you work in a watercolor journal? On loose watercolor paper, copier paper, yellow legal pad, junk mail, netflix envelopes, textured handmade paper, cardboard cereal box, a moleskine drawing journal, photograph/shiny magazine, masking tape, fabric, wood, canvas, index cards? Describe your drawing environment: Do you balance your journal on your knee? Draw comfortably at a table, stand in front an angled easel? Journal balanced awkwardly on your lap on the metro, sitting on a drizzly park bench, lying on the beach on a towel on sand, in your art studio with perfect lighting? What do you do to your surface “before” drawing: Do you paint abstract watercolors or acrylics? Start with a rough pencil sketch or an uneven collage glued to the page, hand stitch the edges? How do you treat your work “after” drawing: Do you watercolor your drawings? Mail off your artwork as good mail day fodder? Paint with acrylics, shade in pencil, stitch on your sewing machine, add collage, perhaps embellish with gelly rolls? Cut up for art journal fodder? What about your color preferences: Do you work in only black or sepia? Adore a huge basket of fresh markers or overlapping transparent colors? Pick what type of lines you draw: Would we find an abundance of cross-hatching or curvy doodles? Clean edges, precise circles? Do you use a ruler or french curve? Do you like your lines to run or stay put? Light, bold... smudged?
Calculate the possible permutations
We all use our pens in different ways. I might draw and immediately watercolor my drawings. You might draw at the beach where the splash of water is inevitable. Permanence would be key for both of us. Or not.
As you get into drawing, you’ll get pickier about the writing implements you use. You will care about the consistency of the line, how long it lasts, whether you can carry it in your backpack. You will care whether it is waterproof, how quickly it dries, whether it feathers, whether it can take raindrops without dissolving.
Do you date your art journal pages?
Do you have a stamp or sticker for the back?
I date all of my pages on the front or on the back. Something about knowing when I did something, at least what month it was, makes me happy. You can use a date stamp from an office supply store, hand stamp each number of the date, write it, hide it, print in Word in a fun font, have a secret code for it, but include it.
Here's more in the step-by-step art journaling series, each post about a different aspect of art journaling.
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Maps of my imagination, of cities where grids are few and the streets follow the natural geography of hills and rivers.
5x8" sketch moleskine (off-white paper, slightly rigid)
Made lines in frisket (this particular frisket is blue) and painted with golden fluid acrylics.
after removing frisket
Acrylic: After peeling off the frisket, nice sharp map-like lines with vivid color. But I didn't enjoy painting on this paper. I don't know why. There might be a coating that benefits the paper for drawing but detracts for painting.
Continuing in the 5x8" sketch moleskine; more lines in frisket, then painted with watercolors.
Here's how it looks before the frisket was removed.
After removing some of the frisket.
Watercolor. It was WORK to paint these pages. The paint initially beads. The paint just doesn't flow off the brush. {FYI: One of my lovely readers commented last post that guauche works wonderfully in these sketch journals.} It's easy peasy to peel off frisket - I made a 40 second video of what it's like to peel off the frisket from a watercolor mandala.
Jill Berry's book Personal Geographies
Found an interesting review of various moleskine papers (honest, sincere, methodical): Sketching With a Moleskine by Russell Stutler.
My daughters make lots of maps too!
I've added Personal Geographies and Journal Junkies Workshop to the growing list of books I highly and emphatically recommend in Art Journaling 101.
There is something that appeals to both the analytical and the creative in me. Do you have any insight about being "drawn" to making maps?
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Organizing digital photos can be overwhelming, but not if you set up a user-friendly organizaing system!
PART #5: Software
Two key things to do:
1) organize photos
2) edit photos
Some tools do both -- Apple Aperture, iPhoto, Adobe Lightroom, Google Picasa. Some have a wide range of functions and some do just a few things but quite well.
Some tools do one or the other -- Adobe Bridge (organize), Adobe Photshop CS (edit).
About the tools I've used {your mileage will vary}
Google Picasa for Mac or PC. Picasa can be downloaded free. It is super duper user friendly. You tell Picasa where to search on your computer for photos and it will update what is where automatically. With it you can upload photos from a memory card, name files, add tags, and do basic important edits like crop, straighten, adjust brightness, saturation, contrast, lightness, shadows. I used Picasa for the first few years of Daisy Yellow and it might be all you need! The workflow would be upload, edit, export/compress (for blog/flickr etc) in Picasa.
Apple Aperture. I used Aperture for about a year, finally opting to splurge on Photoshop. Aperture is adept at making color corrections, sharpening, adjusting levels, using various channels, viewing more detailed metadata from the camera, black point adjustment, etc. What drove me batty was the way that Aperture handled the photo library, importing and exporting the master files and all sorts of clunkiness. If Apple has resolved the way the library is handled, I would highly recommend it, but otherwise not.
A screenshot of the bridge interface.
Adobe Bridge. Scott Kelby's Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book (I have CS4; CS5 is the current version) provides insight into how and why to use Bridge to organize photos. I love Bridge. With it I can see all of my photo (RAW, jpg, png etc) files and movie files. Like Picasa (but not Aperture, for example) you can move/copy files to other folders, create and rename files/folders without going to Finder (Mac) or My Computer (PC). Bridge has various viewing options, ways to categorize and tag photos, view metadata, even run Photoshop actions in batch! If you shoot in RAW, clicking RAW files in Bridge opens Adobe Camera RAW for detailed adjustments and open in Photoshop to edit further. {Photoshop CS5 Extended
Photoshop CS5 Extended
Fun things about PS:
Actions (which are macros) automate your repetitive processes or adjust photos in interesting ways. Write them yourself or download actions. My favs are Coffee Shop and Pioneer Woman and Nelly Nero.
Textures are used to layer photographs and add dimension and interest. My fav for textures is Kim Klassen Cafe.
Brushes (like stamps) decorate or alter your photographs. Download freebies in lots of places, or design your own. I find lots at deviantART.
Hope this helped! The last post in the series will be about taking shots and saving them to use on your creative blog. Have a great weekend!
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8.5x11" map, stitching, colored pencil
In the past week, I've become obsessed with making maps and my mind is swirling with ideas. It all started when I picked the book Personal Geographies: Explorations in Mixed-Media Mapmaking
Couldn't wait to draw the first lines in this new 5x8" sketch moleskine with heavy cream colored paper. These pages mark about two weeks of drawing at night and drawing while waiting at carpool. Until now, I've only used moleskines with watercolor paper and thin writing paper. I don't know how I missed this moleskine with heavy drawing paper.
Inventing all sorts of new patterns and designs.
Amazing how inspiring a fresh new journal can be.
This was started on New Years Eve, hence the reference to champagne.
practicing little doodles
5x8" drawing moleskine
{More moleskine work to be shared soon... lots of drawing and some unsuccessful watercoloring experiments in this journal.}
Happy news! I'm one of the 12 artists doing the 2012 Rhodia Journal Swap. We'll each do the equivalent of an entire Rhodia journal filled to overflowing - that's 1/12 of each journal each month. Learn about the participants in Stephanie's post at Rhodia.
We're getting organized! If you are just tuning in, check out Part 1 + Part 2
PART #3: Setting up computer folders ["file" = "photo"]
Let's start small. Let's organize 2011 and 2012. Start with the most current stuff, so you won't get bogged down looking at shots of your cat as a kitten. And you'll be organized moving forward, not getting further behind!
a. Inside the Photos folder, create folders named 2011 Photos + 2012 Photos + WIP + Exports
WIP = work in process
Exports = files you edit/compress for blog/flickr/ning, etc.
b. Inside 2011 Photos, create folders 2011 Art + 1Q11 + 2Q11 + 3Q11 + 4Q11 {or whatever chronological groupings you wish}.
c. Inside 2012 Photos, create folders 2012 Art + 1Q12 + 2Q12 + 3Q12 + 4Q12.
d. Move photos to their SHINY new folders.
PART #4: Naming photos and using folders
a. Upload photos from your camera. When you transfer, direct the upload to your WIP folder.
b. Name the files. When I upload to the computer, I start the name with the date the photo was taken (notthe upload date) in 2 digit year-month-date format. Photos taken on January 23, 2012 would have 120123 at the beginning of the file name. The beauty in this name is that the photo date is sortable by file name. For 2005 you would use 050122 at the beginning.
c. Pare quickly. Upload, name the file, delete the cruddy photos and keep the best of the duplicate shots. I review art-related photos visually - looking at a large icon of the photo - instead of by file name, so I don't worry about individual file names. A file might be called 120111tammy.jpg or 120123junk.jpg.
This dialogue box pops in Adobe Bridge when you put your memory card in the drive.
If you had asked me this a few years ago I would have said DEFINITELY tag photos. But when my PC died in 2009 it took my ancient {discontinued} photo software with it and the hard-earned tags were not recognized by any other software. Tagging is adorable when you can sort out all "susie" + "birthday" photos for the past 7 years but that must be weighed against the time it takes to tag every.freaking.photo with every.relevant.tag.
A little tidbit from Carlene [blogs at Taylor Maide]: "My system of downloading my digital photos to my laptop into a file labeled with the year and month has worked pretty well. I then pulled out the art photos into their own file for my artwork and put them into sub files by category like art journal pages, backgrounds, collage fodder, etc. I left photos in the general file of "my artwork" until I had used them on the blog and then I tucked them away into the appropriate sub file. I was able to find this easily. I started using tags recently instead of the previous file sub categories. That is helpful because I can apply more than one label, instead being able to find it under art journal, NaNoJoMo and houses. I know I want to start editing the file name as well. I need suggestions on how to best rename them. I think what's hanging me up is the transition from computer file structure to online set up."
[updated April, 2011]
When you are first starting out, trying to buy art materials for art journaling, doodling and other fun stuff, the options can seem overwhelming. If you aren't sure whether you'd like something, buy a few colors and play. It's what you are comfortable using, what you like to do in your journals, etc.
Beyond "regular" art materials, I like to recycle stuff like receipts, ticket stubs, maps, leftover cardstock, found objects and photographs in my art journals. More on ephemera (the "stuff" you put in your journals), see Step #399: Art Supplies and Step #414: Ephemera and Step #574: Create Journal Fodder.
{feed readers: click here for the full article}
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Welcome to a new set of creative experiments. The idea behind the experiments is to explore and play off things you already know how to do.
Creative Experiments 2012.rev.02
Daisy Yellow
For tracking purposes, each experiment is valued at one creativity point unless otherwise noted.
♥ Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Pick a word, any word. It could be your word of the year, your name, a place or word that is special to you. Write and draw the word in at least 25 different ways. Invent a font, get inspiration from other people's hand lettering (examples: Sketchbook Project by Nicole Duquette and my Line Practice) {check out this completed experiment at Modern Marigold}
♥ Tangents. Listen to a podcast about something out of your area of knowledge. If you don't know how to knit, try a knitting podcast. What about vegetarianism, philosophy, beer brewing?
♥ Natural Patterns. Collect leaves + acorns + twigs + petals from the garden and make a pattern or mandala on your porch or table.
♥ And on and on. Sketch a stapler and staple the sketch to a piece of paper. Sketch scissors and cut out the sketch. Sketch a tape dispenser and tape it to the fridge. Sketch the fridge and put the sketch in the fridge. Silly is good. See if anyone notices.
♥ Kitchen Art. Cook something new to you! Spinach-onion quiche! Blueberry-strawberry tarts! Meatloaf! Dark chocolate mousse! Beef fajitas! Chicken egg rolls! Matzoh ball soup!
So, kiddos, grab an ART=HAPPY badge, and get started on the experiments you choose.
Check out all of the creative experiments!
5x8" moleskine drawing journal, sideways
I'm drawing stuff! Stuff!
Let me give credit to the sources of inspiration, the photos I used as fodder for practicing my line work. Have you tried using photos for reference? If you have a smart phone you can pull up the flickr mobile site and look at your favorites and use them as fodder for drawing. So hard to get the color of the paper right in photoshop (the top paper is more accurate).
Thought you might need a break from reading about organizing photos. From the number of comments I am guessing that there is not a big interest in digital photo organization? Oops!
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Organizing digital photos can be overwhelming, but not if you set up a user-friendly organizing system!
Check out Part 1 to get started!
PART #2: The computer folder system.
The idea is to develop a filing system by using folders on your hard drive. I've tried throwing everything in one folder each year and using tags to divide it up but managing all of those files is unwieldy and inefficient. If you need to visually scan for something, imagine the infinite page-downs you'll do! So my suggestion is that you divide up your photos but not so much that the system itself drives you bonkers.
Develop a system and use it. A system means the "folder" array you will be using.
Typical filing methods are by date (i.e. year) or subject (i.e. family) or subject within a time period (i.e. a folder for 2011, and inside that folder, folders for Family and Travel) or date within a subject (i.e. a folder for Family and inside that folder, folders for 2010 and 2011).
Here's my basic filing system. This is my folder structure for 2012.
2012 Photos Folder
1Q12 - the quarterly folders are for NON-ART photos (family, cool stuff, garden, etc)
2Q12
3Q12
4Q12
2012 Antarctica (just kidding - it'll be for whatever trip we do)
2012 Exports (photos go here when compressed for web/flickr/etc)
2012 Art
2012 Mandalas/Doodles
2012 Paint
2012 Art Journal
2012 Stitched
2012 Everything (all other art)
Carlene [blogs at Taylor Maide]: "Our family photos have gotten very disorganized and spread over a couple of computers. My 2012 goal is to start from this point with a workable system and then begin to gather and conform the past photos to that system. We need one place to store them online (achieves back up of photos and allows my husband and I both access to them)."
Less: [blogs at Comfortable Shoes Studio] "I'll be honest here, my photos have no organization. Generally speaking, after I've used them in a blog post I rarely look at them again. I load them to my computer by date, edit, load to the blog as needed and then after 3 months dump them on my 2 terabyte hard drive or the 500 gig hard drive, never to be seen or looked at again. Sometimes I load them to flickr. I shoot many on my iPod touch and delete them when it gets too full and runs slow. I have never looked at my photos as precious things more as disposable. I know this is a rather unusual viewpoint to take, I just can't be bothered to treat them as anything else. I do treat the photos I shoot of my art a little differently- I store those on both hard drives, also labeled by date shot but in a folder called art archives. The images I shoot specifically for my various zines and articles I've done are in this folder but haphazardly stored by date, sometimes in a subfolder labeled zine. The pics I take just for taking pics I do look back at, but those are also organized in my haphazard manner- date shot etc. Honestly, I'm so visual I am able to look at the folder thumbnail and know which images are in it."
Stéphanie [blogs at Luthien]: "I have my photos in a folder called photos and then I have different categories, like hobby, family, pets, nature, holidays. Those folders are subdivided into folders. For example hobby is divided into painting, drawings, challenges, journals. And most of those folders are subdivided too. Journal: elise class, indexcards, painted journals ect. I keep all my photos together. So not really separated with the family photos. Everything goes into one big folder!"
Organizing digital photos can be overwhelming, but not if you set up a user-friendly organizaing system!
My plan is for this series to last all week, with lots of discussion and input from you guys in the comments section! I would love, love, love if you would follow along and start {just start} organizing your photos this week - so that you can ask questions as you get to a decision point. Or at least get on the right path so that you know what the next step will be. I'm not an expert, I'm just a blogger that takes a lot of photos.
{if you are reading in your feed reader, please pop over to the site}
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In real life, art is not a neat endeavor.
Case in point: our breakfast table, a week ago.
The girls are building marshmallow towers with toothpicks + marshmallows, Kimba is ready to pounce on any marshmallow that falls, the girls are making necklaces with the beads we just got, I'm drawing faces in the moleskine with an index card of faces from ICAD for reference, my younger daughter's painted matryoshka dolls, my older daughter's sharpies and papermate markers for drawing mandalas and mermaids, and I was finishing Rice Freeman-Zachary's Living the Creative Life
I made a list of artsy stuff I wanted to do late last year (stamped on index cards, of course). This is a refresher. I think it makes sense ot look at this every few months. These are not resolutions. There is always some period of time in front of you, time to do creative stuff - so to think in advance about what you want to learn, what you want to try, what you want to buy, makes sense.
Most importantly, I will continue writing my "3 good things" list every night before going to sleep. I did this almost every night of 2011 and it has helped immensely, in seeing things more positively.
What do you want to do? What do you want to learn? What do you want to buy?
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6x18" strathmore watercolor journal, pitt pen
when i saw this wide wirebound pad for at hobby lobby, it seemed perfect for a cityscape
I've been working on this off and on for a month, usually in coffee shops.
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My older daughter (12) was home from school with a cold last week (better now) so we collaborated on some inky wonderfulness. Sick days shoud be restful, but they don't need to be boring! We used 4 different colors of j. herbin inks. Here's a link to the j. herbin perle noir at jet pens, it's deep-deep purple.
How lush are these inks? We moved the inks around with chopsticks, calligraphy pens and water. Here are more of our experiments creating abstracts wth india inks.
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{i carved some new stamps}
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{Pop over to flickr for the photographic credits}
Just in case you need a little push, these are all quite good fodder for sketching!
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One of the best challenges on the web is the monthly GPP Crusade by Michelle Ward. I'm definitely one to focus on what I didn't do, so this was very therapeutic for me! Without further ado, the GPP Street Team Crusade No. 59: Make a Ta Da List.
The 2011 Recap!
♥ drew mandalas + doodles + faces
♥ drew cityscapes
♥ created lots of art journal pages
♥ painted with acrylics and watercolors
♥ made a bunch of videos
♥ developed the creativity workshop El Parquesito Creativo
♥ taught an art journaling workshop at 21 Secrets with a group of amazing artists
♥ taught my first live art journaling workshop to a group of high school art teachers
♥ published 2 issues of the Daisy Yellow st|ART ezine {just released issue No. 3 this week}
♥ wrote Art Journaling 101 for Kids + Beginners
♥ facilitated Index-Card-A-Day Summer (and Fall) and wrote a list of 50+ things you can do with index cards
♥ incorporated little photos in my art journal pages
♥ shared a personal post about quirkiness that received the most comments ever {thank you}
♥ wrote art journaling without rules and a little of everything
♥ was iced in for a week in February, in which the girls and I all got strep, and 2 of us had birthdays
♥ shot lots and lots of photographs + worked hard to get better at photoshop
♥ made mixed media art on canvas {first canvas painting, Jan 2011}
♥ sewed curtains for my laundry room
♥ filled most of my exacompta journal {here's a video}
♥ opened The Daisy Yellow Shop at Zibbet and sold two pieces of art
♥ bought a bike and rode it with the family
♥ developed the popular groovy printed papers tutorial
♥ wrote a fun list of ideas for creative bloggers
♥ made a lot of tollhouse cookies with the kids
♥ we built a gorgeous rainbow!
♥ did a review of every gelly roll pen imaginable
♥ stitched a lot of fabric together
♥ created postcards for Hanna's DIY postcard swap
♥ helped my 9 yr old convert her work of fiction into a blurb book
♥ developed lots of Creative Experiments and Kick-Start Art Journal prompts and No Frills Prompts
♥ participated in Creative Every Day and Art Every Day Month, created art all 30 days of November
♥ interviewed by Dawn DeVries Sokol at Create Mixed Media, Joyful Arts Studio and Wright Story
♥ submitted my artwork to a magazine for the first time {no matter what the outcome, I'm happy I did it}
♥ read 18 books