A Handmade Easy To Make Blank Artist Journal

I thought I'd share this very easy way to make your own artist journal with your favorite papers.  This method probably won't do for those who enjoy binding their own journals, but if you're a lazy artist like myself it's the perfect way to own an artist sketchbook made with the exact paper you love to work on.  For me when working in watercolor Arches or Fabriano Artistico are the papers I love.


What I've done here is tore a few sheets of Arches 140 lb. CP paper into a size that I like to work with for watercolor sketches.  I also added some plain white writing paper in between those pages to write my notes on.  I wound up with about 30 pages in all.  If you prefer Hot Pressed paper, toned paper, Bristol Vellum, or a combination of several different types of paper for your work this method will work fine for any paper you can dream of.  And, of course you can make these journals for any medium you like to work in be it colored pencil, pen, collage, whatever...


When you've chosen and cut your favorite papers to size, put them in a neat pile.  For watercolor paper I like to have any deckled edges I have showing on the outside of the book.  Once you have all your papers stacked the way you want them to be in your finished book head on over to your nearby Staples, Office Depot, or any similar office supply store.  Ask them to bind your book with a plastic spiral.  


You can use a different paper for your cover, too, as long as you've made it the same size as the rest of your papers.  For example you can use a sheet of watercolor paper and decorate it before or after it's bound with collage, acrylics, etc.   They will be happy to provide you with a clear plastic sheet for the top of your book and a heavier plastic sheet on the bottom for firmness when you are sketching outdoors and aren't resting on a table.  

I've made these books in various sizes, although there is a limit to how large you can go depending on the length of your store's spirals.  The spirals do come in various widths, however, so you have leeway as to how many pages you can add to your book.  It's probably best to check with your local store for sizes with a phone call before you begin.  Here is an example of a couple of small ones I made...

The book on the left is made from Arches WC paper and the book on the left is made from Fabriano Artistico paper.

This is the Arches book opened up.  As you can see it lays flat and is easy to work on when bound with a spiral.

Well, as I mentioned this method isn't for everyone.  But,  for those of us who just aren't into binding our own books, but do still want to have a journal of our favorite papers to work in this does the trick nicely.  Happy arting!!

STRATHMORE ONLINE WORKSHOPS-ARTIST JOURNAL

In March of 2012 I started the free Cathy Johnson's Artist Journal Workshop on the Strathmore's Online Workshops website.  Their home page is here.  The workshop I did was available to do for anyone until August 2012.  But, they offer three month-long free and very extensive art workshops every year by well known artists in their field of expertise.  They begin in the early part of each year and are available to do up until August of that year.  I highly recommend checking them out!


On the first day of the workshop I went outside to sit on my front porch to sketch and paint geraniums.  But, as soon as I stepped outside the beautiful sky caught my eye and I just had to try to capture that instead.  The clouds were plentiful and huge, puffy and moving fast in the deep blue sky.  Not only were they moving quickly in the sky, but they were also moving and changing shape within themselves at a rapid speed.  They looked like boiling steam or flowers opening up right before my eyes.  It was an amazing view.  I wasn't able to capture it perfectly, but here is what I did capture....

A few days later I was able to get back to the geranuiums, so I did an ongoing series of buds to bloom.....

Again, I encourage anyone to join this annual series of workshops, if possible.  It usually begins in January/February of each year.  You will learn a lot from experts in various mediums while you're having fun doing it.  I also find it to be a great inspiration to get the creative juices flowing.  Have fun!

USING INCHIES TO MAKE GREETING CARDS

Once I got the hang of making Inchies and Twinchies as demonstrated in my other post  Click here  I decided to use them to decorate handmade greeting cards. 


1.)  For my first effort I found an old failed painting to use.  Then I looked for colorful areas in it, and ripped out a few possibilities...

I looked for a few areas that I especially liked with my handy dandy 1" masking matboard (lower right hand corner in picture below) and cut out one inch squares of the areas that I thought would go together nicely.  Once I got what I liked I put all six inchies together and flicked a bit of gold paint on each square.  In this case I glued them down on a blank olive green greeting card.  After all that was done I "framed" the six inchies with a gold pen.

Here I've laid my inchies on the greeting card to figure out the most appealing assemblage. You can also see the materials I used in this picture.

I used the same scraps of an old failed painting to make the card above, but here you can see I decorated my inchies with black ink for a cohesive look and mounted them on a white greeting card instead.

For this card I made my own abstract inchies by flicking many layers of watercolor and acrylic paint on top of each other until I got the effect I wanted.  I also decided to make use of the deckled edge of the watercolor scrap paper I was using when I cut my inchies.  Once I was happy with them I glued them on to my card and drew a "frame" around them with a black micron pen.

2.)  For the next few cards I used old stickers I had laying around... 

For this card below I painted four two inch squares deep pink to use as a base to glue my stickers on.  Once I glued the stickers to the pink squares I flicked gold paint on them.  Next I glued the four of them onto the card and drew a frame around them with a black micron pen.  Then I stamped the words, "Wishing You Joy" below and viola' I have a card.  Here are the supplies I used to make my twinchie fairy card...

"Wishing You Joy"

Here I'm making another greeting card from old floral stickers I had laying around.  These stickers fit perfectly onto inchies...

It was fun to make these cards and it's a lot of fun to use them when I need a card for a friend.  In the photo below you can see all the finished cards together...  

Thanks for looking in.  I hope you've been inspired.  Comments and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

INCHIES, TWINCHIES AND SO ON

This past winter I discovered a new art craze and it's called "Inchie Art".  It consists of tiny one inch square pieces of art work.  They can be made of anything, paper, mat board, felt, leather, etc. as long as they measure one inch square.  They're painted, woven, stuffed, collaged, sewn, tangled, etc.  


When they're finished they can be framed either separately or in groups.  Special frames are made just for inchies and be ordered from the internet.  They can be made of cloth, decorated, stuffed and mounted onto tiny canvases that stand on small easels sold just for this purpose and they can be displayed in small shadow boxes  The options are endless.  Inchies can be used to make greeting cards and gift tags.  People make jewelry and fold out books with these little gems.  They are also swapped on Yahoo and eBay, and they're fun to do.


Many supplies are available for inchie making:  frames, precut mat board inchies, jewelry to mount them in, special stickers and collage materials just for inchies, and on and on.  To find these supplies simply do a web search for them by typing in the word "Inchie", of course.


Then....there's Twinchies!  As you may have already guessed they are the same thing only they measure two inches square.  They call 1 1/2" squares Betweenchies, I believe.  And, when they're round they're called Rinchies.  Pretty confusing!  


They're all fun to do, however, and like so many of the miniature artworks that have gotten popular lately, they can be done with so many different materials and used in so many different ways.  The sky's the limit.  For more information, examples, links to inchie websites, supplies such as precut Inchies and frames, and a detailed explanation of exactly what these little gems are all about, here is a link that explains it all far better than I can:


http://stamphenge.wordpress.com/1-2/inchies-twinchies-definitions/


I had fun dabbling in inchies myself and below are a few demos of how I made mine, the materials I used and what I did with my tiny little artworks once they were completed...




1.)  For my first few attempts at creating inchies I simply got out my watercolors and painted them.  When I had what I wanted I glued them into my 11" X 14" visual journal, sometimes mounting them on a background first, drew a frame around them and wound up with very decorative visual journal pages. 


Below is my first attempt, a silly little bunch of inchies depicting the beach where I spend my winter months...

"Water Temperature 92 Degrees, Naples Beach"

Next I wanted to do something colorful, so I made a few tiny little cup stencils, traced them onto watercolor paper that I cut to square inch size, and painted all sorts of colorful cups that I then glued and "framed" into my large visual journal...

"Lotsa Cups"

I loved a little poem that I found on a tissue box this past winter and so for my next inchie creation I copied parts of it and made an inchie display using it.  When I had what I wanted I mounted the inchies on a piece of Scrapbook Paper that looked like grass and then mounted all of that into the same journal...

"What's This I See?"

2.)  Once I began playing with inchies my mind began to think of more and more ways to create them.  Next I decided to collage a few.  

For my first attempt I got out a few old magazines and cut out one inch squares of color to make a rainbow that I had in mind.  When I was finished I glued all the square inch pieces down in my visual journal.  Here is a picture from my studio of the materials I used to make "Roy G. Biv"...

Ruler, Roller To Press Glued Pieces Down, Scissors, Old Magazine To Do My Gluing On, and Piles Of Inchies In Rainbow Colors 


And, the end result...

"Roy G. Biv"

3.)  Well, that was fun.  So, next I decided to use my own artwork to make a couple of Twinchies (2" squares).  First I scanned my own paintings.  Then I resized each scan into 2" X 2" squares, cut them out, mounted them together on suitable backgrounds and finally inserted the final pieces of artwork into my large sketchbook. 

 "The Gallery"

"The Ladies"

To see my Inchie Greeting Card Demos please click here.

My examples pale in comparison to many of the much more creative inchies you'll find by searching the web.  But, I hope you've been inspired to try making a few of your own and looking further into the Inchie Craze if you've never tried them before, and as always thanks for looking in!

Gurney Journey: Video: Sketching a Donkey

Just had to share the video below for anyone interested in using watercolor pencils.  I, myself, haven't gotten around to using them yet, but hope to soon.  This is a fun video, just a bit over 4 minutes, with fun music.  You just may catch yourself dancing while you're learning!  Enjoy......

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2011/09/donkey-portrait.html?spref=bl

WATERCOLOR DEMO, PURPLE IRIS-HOW TO KNOW WHEN YOUR PAINTING IS FINISHED

This is a demo of a painting I began in a recent watercolor class I was taking. I'd like to say that it's also a good example of the age old problem of how to know when your painting is finished.  But since that's a lesson I still haven't learned after 30 years of painting  I'll let you watch me NOT know when a painting is finished so that maybe you'll do a better job at it.  LOL  This is also a lesson in using a limited palette in your painting.

All Paints in this demo are Windsor Newton and the paper is Arches 140 lbs. Cold Press.

Colors Used:

French Ultra Marine Blue

Alizarin Crimson

Sap Green

Aureolin (Yellow)

1.)  Below is my sketch and my beginning washes.  I was happy with this and thought it showed great promise.  I made my purple by mixing a combination of Alizarin Crimson and French Ultramarine Blue.  You'll also notice I'm bringing some Aureolin Yellow into the flowers to tie in one of the other irises that I intend to make all yellow.  By using as few paint colors as possible and mixing them to achieve other colors you need you give a cohesiveness to your painting.  

2.)  In this next step I'm continuing with my flower washes and I added the first glaze to my background by mixing the Aureolin with Sap Green.  I covered some of the leaves while I was glazing the background because I know I'll use this layer of glaze as an under layer when I build the leaf colors up later on.  I consciously choose a yellow for the bottom front iris so that it will pop forward.  I also want to tie the whole painting together by using bits of the same yellow on my other two iris flowers and using it in my green background color mixture.  It was at this point that I also decided to do this painting in a vignette style (not finishing it to the outer edge of the paper).

3)  Okay, now I've darkened my background (this turned out to be a Bad Move as far as I'm concerned) considerably by mixing a lot of the French Ultramarine Blue and a bit of the Alizarin Crimson into my Sap Green to make it darker.  At this point the leaves are still the color of the first background glaze and the flowers are the same as they were in the previous step although they might look a bit different because of the difference in background hue.  You might notice that at this point both flowers and leaves are fighting to be the central point of the painting and that's not a good thing.  There can only be one star!

4)  In the finished piece below you can see that I further darkened my background.  I did this by using an Indigo Prismacolor pencil to blend in some of the blotchiness and darken the background around the three iris flowers and leaves hoping to pop them all forward a bit.  I also used a Dark Green Prismacolor pencil for that purpose and to solve the problem of the leaves fighting the flowers for attention.  I shaded them darker so that they would recess further into the background which would make the flowers pop forward.  

Also, in this last step if you look closely you can see texture on the leaves from the pencil.  If you choose to use colored pencil as I do you have to add the texture all around your painting here and there, which I did, although it's probably difficult to tell in this photo.  If you don't add it in places everywhere around your painting the spot that you did add it to will look out of balance and the viewers eye will go right to it.  Using a Deep Purple and Indigo Prismacolor pencil I sharpened up and deepened the iris flowers, as well.

Using Prismacolor pencils in your watercolors is definitely not the norm.  It's a habit I developed out of being too lazy to achieve the same effect with a small watercolor brush and more glazing, which is how it really should be done when you're painting in this particular style.  But, I'm no watercolor saint.  I break whatever rule gets in my way nowadays.  LOL  Eventually, I'd like to try doing this last step, a step I just can't seem to resist for some reason, with watercolor pencils.  But, I haven't experimented with them nearly enough to feel confident using them in a painting yet.  Perhaps that calls for another "Paint Along With Me And Watch Me Make Mistakes Demo".   :-)  

My Comments:  Was this a successful painting?  Not really, as far as I'm concerned.  If you go back to the first photo of this demo I quickly lost that light, washy, watercolor look that was my original intent for this painting and that I thought was so pretty.  The background is probably the problem and I lost it the minute I put in the first glaze and made it too heavy.  Right there my background began fighting with my flowers which I had to correct by darkening the background and so the problems began.  As the title of this post says, sometimes it's just good to know when to stop fussing with your work and let it be.  I think I should have stopped many glazes before I did!  So, after 30 years at this it's still a continual live and learn process for me.  Mistakes are great teachers and I'm a slow learner!  I hope I can spare you from making some of the mistakes I've made by letting you learn from mine.

Thanks so much for looking in...comments are always welcome and appreciated.

WATERCOLOR-DEMO AND A GOOD USE FOR A FAILED PAINTING

There are many ways to decorate a gift box with your artistic endeavors.  Not the least of which is simply doing a painting directly on plain gift wrap paper.  But, here I'll show you a way to decorate a gift box and give a failed painting a new life at the same time.  Before I do that, however, here's a little demo of the painting I eventually wound up using on the gift box.  Hey, we all goof sometimes.  I goof a lot, so I've learned that I might as well make the best of it.  LOL...




Colors Used:
Windsor Newton French Ultramarine Blue
Windsor Newton Alizarin Crimson
Windsor Newton Olive Green
Windsor Newton Aureolin (Yellow)




1)  I was just playing around with a scrap of watercolor paper and wanted to see what it would be like to put shadows into my painting by using an underglaze first.  After drawing the two tulips below I added an undercoat glaze of French Ultramarine Blue in the areas of the painting that I wanted to be the darkest.  Knowing the flowers would eventually be pink I used a blue/purple (French Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson) underglaze and I used the French Ultramarine Blue under the darkest parts of the green stems and leaves as you can see here below.

2)  Next as you can see in this photo I added my pinks (Alizarin Crimson with lots of water) and greens (mixture of Olive Green and Aureolin Yellow) on top of the underglaze and began to also add further glazes with the pinks and greens as I went along one petal and one stem/leaf at a time.  If you notice you can still see the French Ultramarine Blue underglaze under the green watercolor on the leaves in this photo.  It's especially apparent in the front leaf closest to the bottom of the paper.

3)  By step three shown below I've completed all my top glazes so that the underglaze no longer shows through.  I've been able to keep my colors fresh because I haven't had to put blue/purple glazes on top of my pure pink and green watercolor to define my shapes.  We've hidden them, those blues and purples, underneath our fresh top layers of glaze.  

4)  This step doesn't look much different than the last one, but if you look at the two very closely you'll see that in the photo below there are crisp, well defined edges on all the petal and leaf shapes.  (I haven't been able to capture it as well on the photograph as I would have liked to, unfortunately.)  For me it's a finishing touch that I often use because I like the effect so much.  I do it by choosing edges and darker curves to accent with very sharp Prismacolor pencils in a darker color.  (Perhaps one of these days I'll do a demo on just that alone.)

5)  If you happened to notice in any of the demo photos above I did a very careless thing.  I originally sketched the tulips so close to the top and left edge of the paper that I couldn't possibly frame this painting.  It was a good painting lesson, however, and I had fun doing it so no harm done, really.  Luckily, it occurred to me that I was getting ready to send a very good friend of mine her birthday gift.  It's hard to send boxes with bows on them through the mail unless you put it in a larger box with lots of protection around the bow, etc.  So, I was looking for an easy alternative.  Knowing she's always loved the color pale pink I decided to wrap her gift with plain pink wrapping paper.  I then cut out and added my tulips and a butterfly to the package and viola! 

I could have added a paper lace doily under the tulips etc., but I decided to leave it plain because the contents were not plain in pattern at all.  In this case the wrapping set the tone for the gift inside which was a set of four very busy pink floral cloth place mats with matching napkins and napkin rings.  She was delighted with the whole thing and seemed especially happy with the handmade gift wrap and greeting card that I'd added to it.  I was happy to have found a use for my failed painting and would probably purposely do this again on a gift box, maybe adding a handmade card of the same motif to it.  Well, I hope I've given you an idea for turning a painting "mistake" into something useful.