House of the Past - Art Journal Collage and Paint

I don't throw out much. I used to throw out mistakes, wanted to scrub them, forget them, move away from them.  Now I think mistakes are generally lying in wait, ready to be cut up and made into something that makes them even more awkward and even more terrific.

This piece didn't involve mistakes, per se, but proof prints with colors that weren't what I wanted. Printing greeting cards particularly seems to result in a lot of "oh, crap!" moments. I intend to get through this pile eventually, adding them to journal pages like this one.

Dena Ann Adams Mixed Media Workshop At UThrive.

There’s still time to register to learn how to turn your personal photo collection into a source of art journal inspiration. With a few tricks of looking closely, your smartphone or digital camera is now an INSPIRATION MACHINE.

Find out all you want to know here: (and see a rad quick video of this process in action)

Working this way has really saved me from looking at blank pages in blank books and not knowing where to start. Also, looking at beautiful backgrounds with nothing else in them and wondering what to put on them? In the past. Word.
Sign up – we’ve got limited space and lots to do! I can’t wait to see you there.

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The Life of An Idea - A+B or A+Mustard - repost from dena-ann-adams.com

Hi, friends.  This is the first sketchy outline of something I might call "Ideatorials" - it's not quite a tutorial in a "how to paint this girl" way, but it's a tutorial for idea generation, a walkthrough of how to use the awesome sustainable resource that IS your journal and your dreaming playful silly self as a way to make work that honors its individuality and its worldview. I really really would loooove some feedback and some ideas about whether this kind of thing is helpful, welcome, and desired. If not I'll keep making them anyway, because that's how I roll. :) But I think this kind of thing can be massively helpful when students hit that stage of "OK I can draw the cute face, OK I can sketch the realistic hand or cow skull NOW WHAT?" I know that a lot of people feel lonesome and stranded at that point and like you're spinning your wheels in a huge way, and I still feel like I'm learning that part of my journey as well, so let's hold hands for a minute.

 

I want to talk about how the journaling mind is not always the right mind to allow final say in what we do.

The journaling mind is the immediate mind. It's the start of a brainstorming session. It's the first idea that sounds halfway worth doing. There's nothing wrong with that. It's completely necessary and it deserves all the nurturing care we can heap on it, and as much indulgence as we can give it. But that doesn't mean we need to leave it in charge of things.

 It has its shortcomings. One problem with the first idea that comes to mind is that it's almost always some kind of a common thought, a cliche, or a stereotype. This is our monkey animal brain at work, and it has kept us all alive and inventing agriculture and swiping ipads for as long as we've been running away from perceived danger, so again, no dis on the gut instinct. It has an important place in our lives, but it really shines when it teams up with some internal regulators.

 Let's look at two kinds of projects that do two different things for me. 

The first is a journal page. It solves a nebulous spirtual/emotional problem. Dena is a sour grown up and forgets how awesome it is just to be alive - that's the problem. As an art thing, it just kind of happened. The second is a pattern design - in this case I'm doing it as a textile and a digital scrap paper. This is designed, calculated, composed, and solves a concrete simple problem (hopefully solving it well) - Be Pretty.

 

The first image is OK. It's got a triteness that I really cringe at. But then I'm working on that, not the tritness, but the not-cringing. I'm making myself just be nice to my inner child, who's not jaded enough to worry about anything beyond making-things-is-fun.

The second image is OK. It's got function, and I think it does it well. I'd wear it, or make a tablecloth of it, or collage with it, whatever. So I decided to collage with these two. What happens when you add A+B?

  

Well, that's nice. I think it becomes more interesting, and it's a sweet card or decorative piece. I could happily leave well enough alone. In fact, I did - and this is available as a print and a card. (I think it's best as a card, personally, Occam's Razor.) But let's try adding A and, this time, instead of B, let's add mustard.

  

Remember her? She was an Illustration Friday piece for "Nefarious". Here's one way to take it. 

 

She's weird. But it feels contrived weird to me, you know? What if we make this world a yet weirder and more complicated place. A + Mustard + B + 24,102 + Peach Potpourri circa 1984. 

 

 Now, I'm still not sure if she's a finished print. I have a page that I can work back into. Printed out with Epson ink on Somerset Velvet it takes paint and gesso and media really well. I will probably go back in in some capacity. 

But my world just got more complicated and harder to pin down immediately. 

There are new questions. If this gets a title like "Nefarious" it becomes a much more interesting illustration because it's broken free of the first available idea in a huge way. If it gets a title like "A Heart for You" - if it's a gift item, it's a compelling one. Can you trust the intentions of little Medusa-esque girls bearing hearts? And why would you not give a little Medusa girl the benefit of the doubt? Pug angel disapproves of your shallow look-ism. That's just one way to tell the story, of course. 

Basically, a few things happened here. 1. Mining of past work.

2. Juxtaposition of obvious opposites, but also harmonious elements.

3. Not forcing an interpretation till all the players have gotten onto the stage.

4. Starting with a journal page.

I hope this makes sense and suggests ways that you can start using your art journal and using digital means as another medium and not just a completely separate medium unto itself. I look at digital as a really sophisticated  scissors and a really sophisticated eraser.  The advantages of this cannot be overstated if you're a collage artist.    

Journal Page - a kind of Gratitude

It's been ages. I'm dusting off, though, and getting into blogging my journal/mixed media practice some more in this space. I feel like I kind of need a playground just for my journaling, versus my portfolio site or pattern design, or things like that. Even though eventually everything comes together, a lot of work starts out kind of personal and precious and I am very grateful that there are places for gentler sharing out there on the same web that can be pretty cruel and hard at times.
 

A peek inside my 9x9 superdeluxe journal - I'm going into the blank pages of old journals I haven't completely filled and doing the job right.

Some people have been really wonderful to me lately, allowing me the luxury of being vulnerable and not exactly my finest. I'm very grateful for that, and it feels like a huge gift.

She's got handmade stamps, acrylic, watercolor, an old stamped image and newsprint at the very beginning, posca pen, stabilo All (which I have mixed feelings about, but whatever) and lyra pencils.

I'm gearing up to make some videos. Any tips out there for a nervous first-timer?

Let's talk about paper

There's a lot of brand fetishism when it comes to materials - and I sometimes have a problem with this. (No kiddding.) I especially have a problem with this when the product is not lightfast but is priced for the pro, and when we, as a community, take the kool-aid and pass it around gleefully like it's the best beverage of the century.

If you are going to call yourself an artist, stake a claim to your creativity, and "grow wings" and all that - why would you not want to put your money into serious materials that cost only slightly more and sometimes much LESS than the toy of the moment?

Roz Stendahl's excellent excellent blog has outed some of my favorite materials as NOT lightfast.

Benefit from the wisdom of Roz's lightfastness testing here.

 

Spoiler alert: bad news about my favorites and probably some of yours: inktense and graphtint pencils. They are Dye based and fugitive. 

Now I use these like crazy - but every single time I use them I get out my scanner - and it's that illustration that I consider the finished work - the original is not something I would sell.

 I like the characteristics of these pencils too much to pass them up entirely.  But they are seriously fugitive - if you aren't scanner happy I would not use these. Period. Check Roz's tests!

If you are scanner happy like I am, and if pixels not paper are your "output" while you still do analog work, then you may be interested in my next statement.

If you want to save money - save it on pigments.  Don't save it on your substrate. Journal from the gut on any paper - but work seriously on good paper. 

 

Now why would anyone apply fugitive cheap ass media to excellent paper that's just going to be scanned anyway? I have a good reason.

Answer: the behavior of media on the paper is completely different from what you're probably used to.  Get ready for lively marks, happy accidents that you don't have to push and shove for, bleeds and drips and subtleties you just can't get without a fight on mediocre paper.

Part 1 : Watercolor.

Fabriano Studio Hot Press versus Uno (Rebranded as Artistco Soft Press Ultra White)

The Fabiano Studio hot press is nice, if you want a sheet of high-grade bristol, but expect your pigment to just dance around on the surface of the paper.  I like Fabriano Studio for collage, sheet journaling, and experimentation. It's not super cheap, but I think it's a bit more freeing than the pressure put on me by a Moleskine, and the paper is solid under glue and paint.

When I applied my relatively crappy (admit it they are!) Koi watercolors to the Uno - holy poopsicles, people.   My Koi colors suddenly rose to the occasion and started to behave like they had delusions of being Holbeins. The warm colors especially - got dreamy.

 Uno is discontinued, but I'm told that Fabriano Soft Press paper is the same thing. At 12 something bucks for 3 sheets via Blick,  the average mixed media junkie is thinking "you're kidding me" - well you'd be right except that would be 12 odd bucks for 3 22x30 sheets.

Don't worry, you don't even need a guillotine. If you've ever folded and reverse-folded and torn a great sheet of paper, you know how easy it is to get 12 small sheets out of 6 mega sheets.

Arches Pads versus Fabriano Studio

A lot of watercolorists insist on Arches. It's only marginally more expensive than Fabriano product and often priced the same. Now, in the studio-grade taped pad category, the Arches is significantly better and less Bristol-like. I love my hot press pad at about 10 bucks for 12 sheets of 9x12 hot press. The Fabriano is about 5 bucks for a pad of 8x10, a size I actually like using. Arches shoehorns you into 9x12. And with pad paper, forget about tearing smaller.

I've had the better Arches in block form, and honestly, I don't care for it remotely as much as Fabriano Artistico.  Your preferences will vary.   Arches is top notch paper, obviously.

 I'm a fan of sheet over block, I've found that it always seems as if some of the budget of a block goes into the block construction and out of the paper.

No Way.

If you just can't stomach this kind of pricing, you could go for the Fluid watercolor blocks by Global Arts, but do the math on the sheets of Artistico and you'll ask yourself why bother, other than convenience.  I think the Fluid is OK - it's better than Strathmore or Bee which I won't even use with watercolor.  (Both are awesome journal papers though.)

Small blocks for fast little works are decent enough.   You will get some of the flow and absorption that is missing from cheap paper - you probably won't step backward if you're doing water media.

Part 2 :The BFD with BFK

 

Acrylic? Gelli Plate? Drawing?  

Rives BFK has your back.  Again, BFK is pricey, but it's about 100 bucks a roll - think what 5 ho-hum paper journals run you.

Rag papers like these pick up a variety of mark making that other papers won't.  They hold up under erasure more. They wound in interesting ways when you scratch or over-erase them. They catch an amazing amount of subtlety if you're a gelli plate person, but you gotta treat them a little differently.  I'll show off some gelli stuff on BFK lighweight next post.

PLEASE don't do anything but collage in deli papers - monotype doesn't have to be a throaway free for all - you can take pride in your prints enough to put them on decent papers and consider them real works!

If you're dying to try something else, I'd do all my serious drawings on Legion Lenox 100 and that's that.  I haven't done much printmaking with Lenox, and I'm not sure it'd be great with gelli, perhaps I should see.

A little behind in being a good blog buddy

Your comments are making me so happy - I hope that every visitor is enjoying him or her self, and that there's at least a little useful information tucked away here for everybody.

I'm so behind on blog visiting! I'll make a point of doing some tonight.

Here's a little fast fun in watercolor, inktense and graphtint pencils, and a brush. On Fabriano Studio Hot press - which is like bristol that doesn't suck for wet media. Lovely!

 One of my less frustrating moments.

Finished Up

So here's the finished spread from a few days back. Some changes, but not too major. I find I'm waiting for a lot of things in my life right now, one of them is the end of a steroid taper, that's the most concrete of them. If you have ever done a long one of these, you'll know the feeling.

I've also  been playing with watercolor. Everything they say is so true about it - it's hard. It's wildly uncontrollable. It's so easy to create hideous badness. And it's fun.