hearts and needles

ladies - 100, or so.

So, this is a little project I want to share with y'all.  I was at Michael's a few weeks ago, and they were having a sale in their dollar section.  I found some awesome blank books (they were actually $2.00, but on sale for 40% off) that I had to buy.  Usually, their notebooks have lined paper, but these were blank and the paper was brown kraft paper - my fav.  So, I bought four of them, though I already regret not getting them all.  The covers left a lot to be desired, though.  They came with Victorian fairy themes, but not really cute.  Sort of cheesy.  I decided to re-cover one, and I'm so glad I did!  I love the way it looks.  I used craft paint, scrapbook paper, and some fabric scraps, and some vintage paper and made it more "me". 

I was hoping to use it as a sketchbook thingie that I could paint in.  I really like painting on kraft paper - the texture is great, and it takes paint really well, and I like the non-shiny finish.  I also wanted the painting aspect to be stress free and fun with very little thought or analysis or judgement.  Fun + stress free = the best.

Thus, "100, or so, ladies" was born.  The book has 100 pages, so my goal is to fill it up with paintings of ladies.  That one above is probably my favorite, so far.  But what about this one:

Are you scared?  She remind me a bit of Carol Channing.

Does anybody else have a little project like this?  One that keeps you motivated to make stuff, but is just for fun, with no "is this good enough" type of judging? I'd love to hear about it.

 

I will post ladies from time to time - if one if particularly funny or interesting.  But if you want to keep up with the ladies, I've created a flickr set of them.

 

tomorrow: illustration friday.  does anyone else participate?  i'm starting now!

Sketchbook Wednesday? Oh, yeah!

Here is my newest sketchbook.  It is completely empty inside, but soon will be, I hope, crazy with color.  On Memorial Day, my friend Peg came over and we spent the afternoon tearing pages, cutting covers, and gluing endpapers.  We each made a book.  Hers looks a little different, but they are the same size, with lots of the same paper (though not all), and the same binding.  Our goal: to trade back and forth as collaborative art journals where we'll experiment with mixed media techniques that we've been wanting to try, etc.  My goal is to have fun, try new techniques, and use it as a dialogue.  We have agreed that we can add to pages the other has started, if we want.  There is no theme, which is good. I am excited to start this, as I already have a running list of things I want to try......  The first assignment is to do a little work in our own books and then we will trade next week!  I think we'll trade back and forth every couple of weeks until they are full.

I love making books.  I have a surge of bookbinding every year.  I have since I was 19, I think!  I learned some basics when I was in college and I got seriously hooked.  I bought Pauline Johnson's awesome book Creative Bookbinding and there was no looking back.  I used to be super uptight about everything being square and plumb and all that and I think making books got a little too precious to me.  But then I started working at a bookstore, and discovered Keith Smith's amazing books.  Uh, wow?  Yeah.  His books totally rule.  Some folks don't like diagrams, but I love how pared down and technical his books are.  He gives so many options because his books are not full of fluffy full color photos (which I also love, but..) Man, you can use his diagrams for infinite variety.  I also kind of love his text - it's sort of odd, but cool.  Anyhow, it isn't that he encourages you to be all uneven and sloppy - quite the contrary! - but he introduced me to the world of non-adhesive binding.  Glue was my sticking point (ha!), and it just irritated me that I had to glue so much to make a book.  But his bindings made it possible for me to make books that had a minimal amount of glue. Which allowed me to make more books... Books that I can put stuff in - which is way more exciting to me than a blank, perfectly precise book.  Ahhh.

 

Next up: a fun project I've been working on. It has to do with ladies.  100, or so, of them.

Sketchbook Wednesday! (a day late)

It has been rainy and cloudy and dark all week (which I love), so new pictures are not an option.  So, I thought I'd share a picture of what my sketchbooks look like.  I have a few going right now.  The one on the bottom is my store-bought basic black sketchbook and is the one where I doodle and scribble, jot ideas, etc..  In some ways, it's the least artful of all my books.  I don't try to make it look good or like a finished product.  It's where I experiment with kooky little folks and animals and anything else that strikes my fancy.  But because it's my springboard for larger ideas and finished pieces, it is my fav.

 

The two on top of that are books I made.  I use one as a sort of (neglected) journal, and the other one - the top one - is a sketchbook of faces.  i use paint, ink, pencil, whatever I've got going, and just play around with faces. Nothing realistic, usually, I am usually trying to capture some sort of emotion or character - weird teeth, someone singing, mustaches, you name it.

Have you seen Tara Ross' blog?  Her art is wonderful and she posts pictures of her sketchbooks all the time.  Check her out (she's having a give-away this week, too!):A Speckle of Twisted Whimsy

 

In other news, this is one of my fav art supplies at the moment:

water soluble graphite pencil - 8B!  so very good.