Danny Gregory and I Discuss Visual Journaling From May 2008: Part one of a two-part podcast. Danny Gregory, author of "An Illustrated Life," talks to me about journaling, art media, and materials…The second part is in the same location. Be sure to check out the great interviews he does with other artists included in his book!
Finding Bits of Time Ricë Freeman-Zachery, author of "Creative Time and Space," talks to me about finding time to be creative. (Taped October 23, 2009.)
My friend Diane sent me a link to this wonderful 3 minute video of James Gurney doing a plein air sketch in his sketchbook using gouache. He is amazing. He removed two portraits he wasn't happy with from his page, put in a background tone and then painted…well just go watch the thing.
I think gouache is amazing, and fun to use.
But when you see someone like Gurney whose talent is so superlative work with it, well you just feel happy.
You might also want to watch this video if you don't understand the fuss everyone is always making about "values."
Yesterday my friend Marsha, sent in two more sites that are graphics treasure troves. Since her comment is buried in the comments I didn't want anyone to miss these two additional sites:
First up is the wonderful "amassblog" by James Phillips Williams. A blog about his collections, many of which have to do with typography or design (he's a designer in NYC).
I've only had a few minutes to scroll through recent posts, but there are some wonderful things here, with lovely clean photography! (I really also liked the photogram of his paper clip collection.) It's definitely a blog to spend some time on.
Next Marsha sent me a link to Full Table where they posted some book covers which will probably matter to you if you've been in publishing for a bit. Go check them out too. When I poked around a bit more at that site I found this was by Chris Mullen and is called The Visual Telling of Stories. I'm just going to warn you that one can get lost here for quite some time looking at all that is gathered together.
Despite the cold temps and threatened snow increase (we had the cold but not much new snow) a large group gathered to hear James Nutt talk about digital sketching on the iPad. It was a dangerous meeting to attend—there are multiple undos in these sketch apps, and layers. A lot of sophistication!
It was great fun and we all learned what to look for in sketching apps.
After James' talk we did some journal sharing and people turned in their pages for our Not-So-Blank-Page Journal Collaboration—you'll hear more about that in the coming months.
Once again we proved that there is a lot of fun to be had in Minnesota in the winter, even when the winter is actually in the spring.
Join us on Monday, April 15 when Suzanne Hughes and I talk about travel journaling and show some of our travel journals. (At MCBA from 7 to 9 p.m. as usual.) Maybe we won't have snow by then?
Join us from 7 to 9 p.m. at the March 18, 2013 MCBA Visual Journal Collective Meeting for an evening with artist and architect James Nutt—to unlock your digital artist. Nutt will share with us why he believes the iPad is an incredible tool for the simple sketch to gallery grade art.
Nutt is excited about the new drawing programs for the iPad because, "there comes a time when powerful and complex technology evolves enough to lose the complexity and become user friendly. Think 3d modeling previous to Google Sketchup. Digital art was in the hands of highly trained Illustrator and Corel programs costing +$1,000 but recently evolved into a quick learning curve $4 dollar program and your finger."
"It also doesn't hurt that you have every tool in a professional artist studio at your fingertips with no cleanup, no scanning—and you can finally paint in the dark while everyone else watches TV!"
The evening is free and open to all adult sketchers of all skill levels. Nutt will have examples of his digital sketching on hand and he will demonstrate how he uses his iPad for sketching.
James Nutt, AIA, is a local architect/artist and constant sketcher practicing at NewStudio Architecture in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. James is very active in the urban sketchers community and an invited blogger on www.urbansketchers-midwest.blogspot.com and www.urbansketchers-twincities.blogspot.com. James has designed many award-winning buildings and was most recently a finalist in Ralph Rapson Traveling Study Fellowship. He believes "an artist should draw to create, record, ask questions, or tell a story and never to create a beautiful drawing. Honesty and craft are the true generators of great work and most people are blocked before they start with the worry of worthiness."
Come and join us for a great evening of peeking into digital sketching. Be sure to bring your journals as well. We'll share current work at the end of the session.
ANOTHER REMINDER: People participating in the Not-So-Blank-Page Collaborative Journal Project need to bring their 2 pages of artwork to this meeting. The cost will be determined based on the number of participants and you will need to write a check or pay cash (no change will be available so try to bring an assortment of bills).
Recently a reader wrote in lamenting Strathmore's decision to discontinue 5-ply Plate Bristol. She wondered if I had found a product to replace it.
Well she was right to ask me because Strathmore's 5-ply Plate Bristol was a favorite of mine for decades. I loved painting on its ultra smooth surface. And pen and ink work was a joy on it. I don't know when they discontinued this product but I know early in the 2000s I started having difficulty purchasing it. I was going to do a project which required more that the 5 or 6 sheets I had in my flat file and I couldn't get it anywhere. So I started looking for something else. It made the eventual demise less painful. One thing we can't get away from is that papers will come and go in our lifetime.
So for other people who miss painting on this surface I have some suggestions for you today.
First off—Strathmore's 500 Series Illustration board is also the same surface as the 500 Series Bristol paper. So you can still have this surface and have it mounted on board which will still give you the stiffness needed. (The boards come in plate or vellum so you can have your choice of smoothness, plate of course being smooth, and vellum being a bit more toothy [and great for pencil work].) The board core is archival.
If you are simply looking for papers that will be heavy enough to take mixed media work you could always use 300 lb. watercolor paper, which is what I do most of the time. I actually now have several series I do only on such paper (such as my rock paintings). If what you miss from the bristol surface is the ease with which paint could be lifted you might start your experiments with Arches 300 lb. watercolor paper. It takes quite a beating and because of the sizing you can lift up a little better than some of the other wc papers. You might also try adding a bit of gum arabic into your paint mixes or wash water when you paint. Additional gum arabic makes lifting easier. Be careful however as too much gum arabic leads to paint which doesn't dry, or is a brittle film, and in some situations creates a varnished sort of glare.
Coating any stiff paper with clear gesso or white gesso (depending on the "color" you want and how much you want the paper to show through) is also a good option. I do a lot of loose work on gesso coated paper and it makes lift up easy. Here's a pelican painting I did on gesso-coated paper. I left the strokes of the gesso visible so the paint could settle in the groves and make interesting textures.
Claybord™ Textured is now Aquabord™. I use it for a lot of gouache and watercolor projects. Lift up is very easy on its surface. You can even take a wire brush to it. You should check out Charles Ewing's book on working with this surface, "The New Scratchboard." (The book is currently out of print, but should be available in libraries or as a used book.) In this painting of a tick all the reflective areas were lifted off after the entire subject was painted and dried. I was able to control the lift off so that I could retain areas of lighter color or go all the way back to the white board color. (I LOVE THIS SURFACE.)
Yupo is also a surface that is easy to lift from, but it's also a bit hard to develop a knack for getting the paint to stick in the first place. Here's a coyote skull I painted on Yupo with watersoluble crayons—adding dry pigment, wetting, moving around, rubbing back off, adding more dry, blending. I'm not using Yupo enough for paintings to keep up with any archival concerns or assurances, so before you spend lots of time working up new techniques for Yupo, make sure it meets your other artmaking criteria. For me it's a fun surface.
If you are looking for a paper mounted on a board you can always try working on Strathmore's 500 Series Illustration Board for Wet Media. This board has the paper you've seen me write about so frequently attached to a wet media board. (I make my own books using Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media paper and you can now buy commercially made books from Strathmore with this paper.) The boards are a lovely surface on which to work. (While there are other illustrations boards on the market I only use the 500 series boards from Strathmore which are archival. Be sure to check that the board on which your paper is laminated is archival if that's your goal.)
Since Strathmore still makes up to 4-ply 500 Series Bristol you can still purchase the thinner plys of the plate bristol from them and mount a sheet to a stiff board. By making your own board-mounted paper you'll have the surface you want, in the size that you want, on a board. (I recommend masonite or hardboard which you can get at most hardware stores. Also many hardware stores are happy to cut a larger sheet down into several panels for you.) I begin by treating the board surface with at least 2 coats of sanded gesso—to remove bumps in the gesso and seal off the board from the paper. I then glue the paper to the board with either a gel medium or with PVA. To ensure smooth contact between the sheet and the board I use a roller to apply the glue. I then place the paper, cut slightly oversized, so it hangs over the edges of the board. I put protective sheets of clean bond paper on top of the paper and burnish it in place (you don't want any air pockets). I use one of those 3M plastic burnishing tools that look like a credit card—so that I get even pressure and no impressions you might get with a thinner bone folder. I remove the burnishing paper and place the board/paper piece under weights until the glue is completely dry. When it's dry I flip the board over paper side down onto a clean cutting mat. Using the edge of the board as a ruler I run the X-acto blade around all sides of the board cutting the overhanging paper to the exact size of the board. This method of adhesion ensures that all my paper edges will be glued down right to the edge of the board. And I don't have to fuss trying to match a paper size to a board. I will use this procedure on lighter weight papers on which I want to work while having a stiff backing. Many companies like Ampersand (who makes Claybord™) now sell cradled hardwood ("framed" edges) boards and the same technique can be used to apply paper to their surface.
Fredrix makes a wonderful watercolor canvas board that I use for gouache paintings. For an idea of how easy it is to lift colors off you can see this painting of "Gooser." There's a lot of letting paint simply run along the surface before rubbing it back in areas and working it up again. (Fredrix also makes watercolor canvas in rolls and pads, but I like having the stiff surface of the board to work against, so I typically buy it as boards.)
I too was sad to lose the 5-ply smooth 500 series Bristol from Strathmore. But papers come and go in the art supply world. We have to learn to adapt. I embrace that adaptation as part of the fun of painting. It's a sane move too since I don't have control over discontinued papers and I don't have the budget to buy up enough of any paper to "last" my lifetime.
And I wouldn't want to, because I'd miss out on all these fun adventures.
I hope some of these alternatives will work for you too. And I hope along the way you discover whole new methods of using your painting surface.
I found out about Listfield through Visual News. I don't know how I started getting little notes in my email box from Visual News. I must have subscribed to it after someone sent me there for something visual. (I'm not a big subscriber to anything on the internet. OK I subscribe to new videos of Maru!) I'm glad I did, and if you like visual stuff I recommend you go and check it out.
Of course my favorite painting of Listfield's is the Astronaut on a country road looking at the "Alien" crossing sign. Pure joy when I look at that—Alien reduced to infographic. (Also a little scary.)
While you're over at Visual News check out the post—Gifs: Nature Repeats Itself (also, incidently written by Shawn Saleme). It's amazing what you can do with gifs. I particularly like the goose flying gif.
Warning—if you get over to Visual News you'll probably spend some time there checking things out. I guess I should have mentioned this at the beginning of the post. Oops.
Above: Stacy Stanley presents her project. Click on the image to view an enlargement.
February 18, 2013 Minneapolis artist Stacy Stanley presented her process for a commissioned illustration for the Minneapolis Farmer's Market commemorative bag. Twenty some Collective members braved the cold temps to come out and learn about Stacy's experience from start to finish.
Stacy made several trips to the Minneapolis Farmer's market to gather resource material in the form of sketches and photographs.
Next she met with the client to discuss "needs" and wishes. The client wanted the inclusion of several elements from things as iconic as the Minneapolis skyline and the red-roofed sheds to simple elements such as egg cartons and beets. The client also specified the need to include a crowd of ethnically diverse shoppers.
Stacy went through several compositional rounds to incorporate all the necessary items, including the typography. Eventually she hit upon the use of a five point perspective grid (which creates a sort of fish-eye view) on which she would ultimately compose all the required elements.
Valentine's Day Minneapolis-based artist Ken Avidor talked about working on toned paper in a demo at Wet Paint in St. Paul. I was able to get some of it on tape.
Since I stupidly decided to avoid the highway rush hour traffic and go on River Road I got stuck in the exodus from the University! I arrived about 15 minutes late but then started right in taping at what I think you'll agree is a great moment to start!
Left: Roberta and Ken Avidor show off their new Brompton folding bikes in the concourse of the Union Depot in St. Paul, MN. Click on the image to view an enlargement.
From talking with friends afterwards I think what I mainly missed was a discussion of some of his tools and his admonition to "always draw from life," and his repeated encouragement to "draw every day."
In the video some things are mentioned and the following links and information will help you in your search for the whole "scoop."
People Mentioned in Ken's Talk:
Ken mentioned the Minnesota Journal Project 2000 in his talk. Linda Koutsky and Mark Odegard were the original coordinators who started the project and I (Roz Stendahl) was brought on in the fall of 1999 as a coordinator. I helped bind the 50 journals we used for the project and helped with the various activities and exhibits. This project ran through 2000, with exhibits in 2001. Fifty Minnesota artists, writers, songwriters, actors, directors, graphic designers, and other creative individuals kept journals for the year 2000 and those journals became part of the permanent collection of the Minnesota Historical Society. (In 2010 the group held a reunion at the History Center and an additional journal containing work from most of the participants was added to the collection.)
Both Ken and Roberta were artists already known to Linda and Mark (who had hired Ken when they both worked at the Science Museum). I first met Ken and Roberta when we had our first meetings for this project. In a studio visit with them I grumbled about the bond paper Ken was using for his sketches and I have been nagging him ever since to use better paper and materials because his art blew me away when I first saw it and it still does today. I'm pleased to say that I have made several appearances in Ken's journals over the years, thanks to my bossiness which he captures perfectly!
Sketchbooks and Paper:
For quite a long time Ken used Cachet's Earthbound journals for his daily journal. He liked the toned paper they contained. However the bindings were always pretty battered by the end of the year. He has since switched over to Strathmore's Toned Paper Journal line and is loving the slightly darker tone of tan paper (and also works on the line's gray paper). He finds the binding superior and recommends them. (You can read about the Strathmore journal line here. Ken only uses the toned paper journals in this line, and he only works in dry media. The post contains images from my toned paper journal experiments in this line.)
In the video Ken passed around some drawings on loose sheets. He was working on Magnani's Annigoni Designo (which is a wet-media ready paper that I routinely make into books, but which is also available in pads) and Stonehenge Kraft, available in sheets and pads.
Tools:
Ken now uses China markers (white) after talking with Don Colley, who visited the Cities last fall. (Don is coming back to the Cities in May 2013 so when I have details of any demos he might be doing I'll let you know.) (Note: Wet Paint sells white China markers, as well as other colors as I have a bunch, but I couldn't find a link on their site so I've given you the Amazon link so you can see what they look like).
Stabilo Tone watersoluble wax crayon in wood, which Ken calls a Stabilo in the video, is actually now only available as a Stabilo Woody. (This is my favorite watersoluble crayon, which if you've been reading the blog I've lamented long about. Use Stabilo Tone in the search engine and find a ton of posts on it. If you go to the link I've provided and scroll down to a "pens and crayons photo" you'll see both a white Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Big Brush Pen [A] and Stabilo Tone/Woody [E] so you'll know what to look for. Wet Paint has both.)
White Prismacolor Pencils. (The regular colored pencils, not the Verithins.)
Pastel Pencils and pastels.
Lyra large colored pencils.
Ken used to use the Rotring Sketch pen but it is now his fall back pen. Currently he uses a Noodler's Flexnib—but would actually prefer a non-flexible nib. He uses the Noodler's pen because it looks more like a fountain pen and people don't realize he's sketching. He uses Noodler's ink, sometimes Platinum Carbon Black ink (though he has trouble with this ink in some pens), and various fountain pen inks (since he's using dry media for coloring he doesn't have to have a waterproof ink). He still carries the Rotring because it has a converter and if he runs out of ink with the Noodler's pen he has a back up. He will also use the Preppy Pen (which you can read about on my blog here, and you can read another more recent review of the Preppy here where I talk about the news that you can get converters for them!).
Sketch Outs and Sketch Out Groups:
Ken mentioned the following groups and events—
Urban Sketchers an international sketch group started by Gabi Campanario.
Urban Sketchers—Twin Cities (which is the local authorized sub-group of the Urban Sketchers organization and you can read there how to become part of it if you're a Twin Cities sketcher.)
MCBA Visual Journaling Collective is a group for journaling artists of all types (we have some writers as well as visual journal keepers) which I run with Suzanne Hughes at Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
MetroSketchers—a local sketching group started by LIz Carlson and run by her and Tim Jennen. They meet the first Sunday of the month at different locations. You can find them on Facebook (no website at this time). You can contact Liz for additional info at MetroSketchers@yahoo.com.
Each year I run the Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out during the run of the Fair. This is the link to the Fourth Annual Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out from 2012. The 2013 Minnesota State Fair Sketch Out will likely be on the Tuesday during the run of the Fair but details have not be finalized yet. Please check back, and use the blog's search engine to read about helpful hints for sketching at the Minnesota State Fair. Sketchers of all levels are welcome. (Yes there will be buttons!)
Ken and Roberta Avidor are two of the featured artists in Danny Gregory's new book "An Illustrated Journey." You'll want to check this out at Danny's blog. He's doing interviews via Skype with the artists and those are great fun to see.
You can reach Ken Avidor at the following email address: ken(dot)Avidor(at)gmail.com
Wet Paint Artists' Materials and Framing—An Independent Art Supply Store:
Wet Paint is Ken's (and Roberta's, and my, and just about everyone else's) favorite art supply store. I know Ken would like to thank them for the opportunity to spread the word about sketching and using toned paper. I'd like to thank Wet Paint for creating a community for artists by their regular demonstrations and "try-out" evenings. You can read more about Wet Paint here. No matter where you are in your journey as an artist Wet Paint staff members are there to help you get the tools and materials which will give you great results.
Ken Avidor will be at Wet Paint in St. Paul on Thursday February 14, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. for a toned paper presentation. (You can go to the Wet Paint page here and scroll down to find full details of the evening.) If you've been reading this blog at all you'll already know a lot about Ken because I post about him frequently and thanks to him I'm always sketching snow piles. He's an illustrator and cartoonist and a very politically involved citizen. It is always great fun to watch him sketch and hear him tell his harrowing stories of sketching in public. (You can see more sketches by Ken Avidor at UrbanSketchers—Twin Cities, and at The Art of Ken Avidor you can find your way to his many other blogs.)
Ken will be joined by another local artist Tara Tieso who also works on toned paper. You can read about her work at the Wet Paint listing.
Go and hear what they have to say about working on toned papers. There are lots of options for these papers in the marketplace right now.
