Comfortable Shoes Studio

Making Shitty Drawings

Occasionally I hit rough patches with my drawing. It’s not a block or a rut, because the desire to draw is still there, but nothing good will emerge from my pen or pencil. As I’m making these rough drawings I hear my inner critic shouting at me that my work sucks, my drawings are no good, and that I should just pack it all up and never draw again. That’s how the critic works. The asshole* in my head waits until my defenses are down and then starts to wail on my already frayed nerves. It’s not so much that I give up, rather I keep plugging away, filling up page after page with shitty drawings.

And that is what I’ve been doing. Over the last few weeks I’ve had a load of crap on my shoulders, real worry inducing crap. The kinda crap I can’t just take my mind off. It’s always there and pervasive. This is when I’ve found my pen starts to create shit on the page. Noses off, eyeballs in the wrong direction, proportions that would make Picasso proud.

The thing is, that this shit, is gold where art journaling is concerned. Shitty drawings give me a window into my head in a way good drawings don’t. I can see the weight of everything that is on my mind in my bad drawings. I’ve regressed 2 years back in my drawing habit. This has nothing to do with the goodness or badness of the art (the art itself is just fine) it has to do with what I personally see in the art. Yes, there are specific things like proportion, perspective, and other REAL problems in the art, but that makes the drawing neither bad nor good, it simply IS.

A art therapy guy named Shawn McNiff ** writes about having a dialog with your art. That you should have a conversation with your piece, and listen to what it tells you. While I find that idea a tad whooo whooo frou frou for my tastes, I do listen to my art, I look at it and gain perspective on what is going on in my life. Like reading your own tea leaves or tarot cards, listening to your art is focus driven and largely a meditative process.

 

I’ll get more into how I personally reflect on my pages in a future post.

 

It was good to identify why my drawings were turning out “shitty.” Being able to look through my book*** and see on this day my drawings were really off, and on this day this happened, it was really weighing on my mind= invaluable lessons. Once I identified what was weighing on my mind I was able to break through the barricade in my head and the drawings started to flow from my pen and onto the page in my usual style.

Make Art with Anything

I've ranted and raved about commercialism in art journaling before. (been under a rock or just discovering me now? Click here.) And I keep ranting about it. I've been gathering videos for technique today over the last few days. (It gives me a nice 20 minute or so break from reading heavy stuff.) It's becoming increasingly difficult to find videos with good solid art technique, if I stick to videos related to art journaling. I'm not usually too shy about looking at stuff that is art andnot art journaling related. But as I viewed video after video, it really hit me.

It's hard to find a video about art journaling that isn't a blatant ad for a product or process or linked to classes. All of it is trying to get us to part with our money. I'm wary of technique videos that read like a who's who of products. Tim Holtz this. Glimmer Mist that. Hellmuth's paints. Grunge Board. Glossy Accents. Spray inks. The videos don't teach us a technique but to be reliant on these products. They don't teach us how to make these product (though there are some old vids that do) they teach us to buy more.

Here's the deal, the secret, all you need to art journal is a pen and a journal. Call me a minimalist but my every day art journal carry (EDAJC) has been the following for the last 2 weeks: A Field Notes notebook, a BanditApple Carnet PeeWee, in a leather cover I made myself and a shitty ballpoint pen*. If I were to extend out my EDAJC I'd add a tin of watercolors in limited colors, a waterbrush, a camera**, a pencil and eraser.

I'm not making "great" art but I am making meaningful art. The art I'm making is helping me to remember the look of the sky as I waited when I picked up my partner. Or the jerking of the train as it rounded corners. Or calmed me after a busy class. This, to me, is what making and creating a journal is all about. It's not about the products I'm buying andusing. It's about the memories I'm creating. It's about my life.

It's real.

Technique Today: Midori or Fauxdori

If you've been reading my blog for any peruiod of time you know I love me some fauxdori Midori traveler's notebook covers. I find them ingenious, easy to use, and encourage journaling every day and every where. I've added some of my videos on the fauxdori as well as some great instructions from others about things you can make and add to your own notebook covers.

If you have issues viewing the videos here on my blog please click the title of the video on the upper left of the video and it will open up in YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

 

Pocket Journals

In my classes and here on my blog I've talked and written about the importance of a pocket notebook or journal, repeatedly and often. Jane and I explored this with our "Field Experiments" posts. I find that when I carry a sketchbook/journal with me ALL the time I use it more often. Even if all i'm doing is writing down which train I need to take and when, I'm using it. Having it on me all the time lets me use it for sketching and journaling whenever I want or need.

I've taken to carrying Field Notes and a BanditApple Carnet peewee in my pocket along with a mechanical pencil and a black ink pen in my coat pocket. It's a barebones journaling set up. No color just graphite and ink.
Because I've been keeping my journal in my inside coat pocket the point of my pencil has been pocking through. I jabbed my hand with it but I was more afraid I'd break a point off or jab someone else on the train. I made myself a little pen sheath that fits over the top of my flap cover.

Tips for Drawing Portraits

Pretty frequently people ask me about drawing portraits. How do you draw a "good" portrait.

Here are 4 tips:

#1. Don't draw from fashion photos. Use well lit images of real people from Flickr or anywhere else you can find them. Fashion magazines and their photography involve a great deal of softening the image to remove the kind of lighting you need to make a good drawing. They also remove every last wrinkle and bump in the face, the stuff you really need to navigate the contours of the face with your pen/pencil.

#2. Don't be so hard on yourself. If you spend 90% of your drawing time worryingabout how much your drawing sucks you'll never get down to the business of enjoying the process. First concentrate on the process of making your image. Enjoy the feeling of the pen or pencil on the paper. Enjoy hte moment of creation. After you are done with the image, then critique it. It's alright to go back and say, "Next time I'll try putting the line for the nose here," or suggesting to yourself, "If I put the lower eyelid in more of a gentle curve, I'd like it more."

#3. Embrace imperfection. You will make some drawings you hate. That's okay. You learn the most from your bad drawings. You learn where you went wrong, so that in the next image you know what you don't like and what you should do with the curve of the nustril and that little divot above the upper lip.

#4. Keep at it. Don't give up. the most important thing is that even though you are going to make some really bad drawings, you will eventually make some really great drawings. But you won't make great drawings if you give up. I make a lot of bad drawings. I'm okay with that. Part of art is learning what your style is and embracing that style.

 

Here's a late add on to this post, MIllande has some great ideas about portraits. I love what she does with her self portrait.

  

On The Go Drawing

Now that I take the train to work I have a choice of drawing or reading. It's pretty evenly divided as to what I pick. I more often then not decide to draw on the way home. It's also a great way tot get uppity type people to not sit with me. Automatic drawings seem to weird those people out.

 

This is where things get complicated. I have drawing stuff for at home and drawing stuff I take with me to school. I’ll write about the stuff I take with me for use on the train and T. At home any pen or pencil is fair game. I use 3 brands of gel ink or gel hybrid ink pens, all of which are water resistant,so that I can add watercolors when I get home. I don’t like using a fountain pen on the train because of the bumps, shakes and jolts. I don’t want to crush a nib.

 

Zebra Sarasa 0.7 This has been my go to pen. It’s not scratchy, the ink flows perfectly on every paper I’ve used and when I layer watercolor, watercolor crayons, and acrylic paint over it, there is NO LIFTING. This is very important in my current work. If I’m layering bright clean yellow over black I can’t have black lifting into the color and turning it muddy or green. Occasionally this pen grays out or doesn’t make a perfect black line. The one detractor of this pen is it’s cheap feeling body. Awesome ink in a cruddy pen body. If I have to write standing up I’ll use a Sarasa, as the clicky pen is easier to use than a fountain pen.

 

UniBall Signo in a variety of sizes. Again water resistant or waterproof ink that doesn’t lift. I find this pen to be a little more scratchy and not as smooth on all papers thrown at it. It is a great dark black ink that never grays out. It’s just not quite as smooth as the Sarasa. The pen’s body is better than the Sarasa.

 

Pentel Pocket Brush Pens I carry 2 with me at all times. I’ve written about them before, nothing has changed from those initial explorations and feelings. I still love these brush pens.

 

Pentel Hybrid Technica I have 4 sizes. I like these but they do have a slight tendency to lift, so I only like to use these when I’m going to leave the page black and white. I have reviewed these in the past.

 

I also carry one of my many technical pencils in 0.5 with me, usually with HB leads loaded. It varies from day to day depending on what I want to use.I also carry a wite out pen and a clicky eraser.

 

Everything gets shoved into a pen roll I picked up at Staples for $5 at the start of the school year. It is padded and offeres some protection for delicate points.

Study Break

I've started to start and end my day with a modified mandala type of image. I start with a center of one of my automatic drawings and build out from it in a somewhat circular pattern. I do not attempt to create anything perfect. Occasionally I'll break out of the circle with shapes. I draw these with an inexpensive but water-resistant pen, usually a Zebra Sarasa or Uniball Signo in 0.7 and black ink. After I finish the drawing and pattern making I work back into the image with watercolor crayons and watercolor.

While I start with a core of my automatic drawings these are different in that I don't add to them in the same way. Rather I work in patterns around the central image.

Anyway, here's part of last night's closer, before I added water.

And one from my train ride home a couple nights ago. If you draw something like this, none of the high falutin' business people will want to sit with you. So on a very crowded train you can end up sitting alone, which is a luxury. Color was added when I arrived home.

And I'll have to write about the particular watercolor crayons I'm using, they aren't Caran D'Ache, but I'm very happy with them. That's a tease right there.

Evidence #2 and Starting Grad School

I had my first week of grad school last week. It kicked my ass, in a good way. It was an intense 9am to 6pm class Monday through Friday. We did a  lot of writing and reading and art making. It was the most completely intense class I've ever had. In short it was awesome. I got to meet and hang out with 23 amazing women. The best thing is I'll be spending the next 4 days with them as well. This time in New Hampshire.

I expected to have evidence on Etsy by the end of last week but I ended up having a lot of work  to do for school. I finally got it all scanned and up today. You can get your very own copy.

30 in June

A few months ago I came up with this plan, I called it 31 in May. It was a good plan to get me producing art on a daily basis and then requiring me to list it on etsy. When the plan hatched from my brain I assumed that my last few weeks of DayJob would be uneventful, sadly I was wrong. So 31 in May becomes 30 in June. I’ll need to come up with a new drawing for it, but there you have the idea in a nutshell.

The reasoning for it is that I’ve gotten out of my daily art journaling habit. I journal but not daily and I miss it and let’s face it, I need it. So the plan is that I work in my small coil bound Stillman and Birn Beta journal everyday for the month of June. When the page is finished to hold myself accountable I load that page to etsy. Each page will be a real journal page. Sometimes with writing, but not always. I’ll work this coil bound journal just like I’d work any other journal, keeping process to the front of my mind. Each page will get a blog post and possibly a video. (The video portion will be harder due to video editing constraints. Editing a video a day is way harder than it sounds.) Anyway, that’s the idea, thirty 5x7 inch pieces in June, all loaded up to etsy and my blog.

It's a Process

I’ve been sick, in more ways than one. I’ve had a sinus infection. It’s knocked me on my ass. I’ve also been dealing with disappointment. Abject utter disappointment. Disappointment so deep it hurts. I let myself wallow in it and be consumed with the feeling. The feeling making my sinus infection seem a hundred times worse than perhaps it was. Or maybe it was just that bad* that it could make me feel so helpless.

The cause of the disappointment is not important other than to me. I’ve spent the last few days in a fever induced haze of misery, scribbling in my art journal and watching TV on my laptop and sleeping.

My scrawling and scribbling in my art journal don’t reveal much to me. It chronicles my self-centered misery, my sadness and my sneezes.**

Except one page, a meditative page I did in a sort of mandala style. It’s also self centered, in that there is an image of me in the middle of the page. Radiating out from the center of the image (at the sinuses interestingly enough) are layers of circles filled with various patterns, alternating colors, lines, rays, circles, sheep, and gears. All of this done on a hot colored background in cool colors.

Though I had not planned the imagery it matches the evolution of my thoughts over the last few days, from useless rage and helplessness to being able to think clearly on the problem at hand and coming up with a plan that may work. It’s not done yet, but I like where it’s going

random

I keep writing about the JF365 Challenge over on AJ ning. I keep writing about it because it's a pretty awesome exercise in keeping an art journal and it's not an easy series of prompts. The techniques are different enough that I'm getting a good artistic workout. I highly recomend the book.

Here are a few teasers:

Brief Hiatus

I took an unplanned and brief hiatus from blogging. I've been doing a lot of stuff just not here on the blog.

Jane and I started the JF365 Challenge over on AJ Ning, go check it out. We're working our way through the Journal Fodder 365 book in a group. It's a tough book on journaling but I'm forcing myself to work with the ideas and styles suggested in it. It's interesting to work in a sort of new to me way. I'm adding a lot more random to my pages than I usually do. Which is fun. I'm also writing a lot more. The monthly questions are great for introspective pondering. Good stuff.

As a result of working differently I've bought a few supplies I hadn't used before, so I'll be doing a few reviews soon. Yay!

I'm wokring on translating some of the experience of working the JF365 into posts here and in the next issue of Put it on Paper.

 

Plastic Laminate with the Provocrap Cricut

I picked up a few laminated signs from old sales at the DayJob. Of course, I grabbed them out of the trash, well, sort of, they were on top and clean. These are 1ml thick hot lamination material over card stock. They are thick.

The cricut did REALLY REALLY well with them, cut the plastic like it was butter. I was surprised. The only issue I ran into is that I need the deepcut housing. Even on 6 and the highest pressure setting I could not cut all the way through the bottom layer of plastic even though I cut it on a blade setting of 6, high pressure 4 times. It did score the bottom layer enough that I was able to sort of pop it out.

So it’s off to Amazon I go to buy a deep cut housing. Though I’m tempted to see if I can just sand off the bottom of my current housing...

I’m going to see if I can snag a bunch of these old signs, I know some of them are much larger, 14x17! That might be cool to play around with... They also have some in lighter weight plastic... Probably the stuff they call 5mil (actually 1/2 ml thick) would be easily cut on the crapcut.

I’ve got too many ideas and not enough time.

Tomorrow I'll show you what i'm doing with these super simple stencils.

Back to the Past and the usual corporate shenanigans

Instagram dropped this little nugget of garbage on us earlier this week. The ToS were insane. So people left in droves, quite literally overnight Instagram lost thousands of users. Then in the afternoon they released this nugget of double speak and whatnot.

Let me translate that for you, Instagram and Facebook Legalese to real English, “Dude we thought you wouldn’t notice that we’re taking your pics and we’re going to turn a profit. How could YOU not know we were planning on making money on this? Nothing in life is free forever. Basically we thought we’d send out an update give you some good new filters plus the ToS and you wouldn’t notice. We didn’t plan for Flickr to release their app this week.”

I’ve been expecting something like this since the day they were purchased by Facebook. These ToS are not so different from the ToS on facebook. The big difference- not being able to opt out.

The reality is that things like Instagram need to turn a profit to stay viable. How do they stay viable- think facebook’s ad system. How many ads do you see on the sidebar of your facebook feed featuring your friends? I see plenty of them. I opted out of them.

As of right now, I can’t opt out of Instagram’s ToS, unless I delete all my pics and leave. Which is kinda crazy. I don’t plan on deleting everything yet, I’ll wait until the new ToS come out to see if I still want to leave them entirely. frankly I’m already using the new updated flickr app and I’m content with that, it’s a service I’ve used for years, trust and will continue to use.

You can find me on flickr.

More Cutting Stuff

Occasionally I'll get an idea, an idea that seems so good, I can't help but to follow it down whatever rabbit hole it takes me, and that is what I did X3 this weekend.

Rabbit Hole #1

Bookmarks. I saw these super cool book marks on someone's web page somewhere. Small, about 3 inches by 1.5 inches with a flap to grip the page- genius! I designed a quick piece in Make the Cut, slapped some of my painted bristol on the Crapcut and yeehaw, bookmarks! The came out neato.(I'll write about how well the crapcut did and didn't do in another post.)

Rabbit Hole #2

Secret Santa Gift Exploding Box. A few years ago I found a template online for a box with an attached lid that sort of screwed down on top of the box. I cna't find the one I made years ago. So I searched and searched and searched. I found a template for "wedding boxes" in the Make the Cut archive. It was pretty in accurate. I made 5 copies with tweaks to the file before I made 1 that worked properly. Also it doesn't help that the provocrap crapcut can't make accurate cuts. I ended up making a 3.25x3.25x4 inch box with lid attached. Ilike exploding box better than wedding box. After I made the 4 mock ups I made 2 in colored paper.

No,, I'm not going to tell you what's actually IN the box, not that my workplace secret santa reads my blog, but I'll tell you it's local and cute.

Rabbit Hole #3

X's and O's. Or my handmade Christmas Paper. If you've been following me for any period of time you know I make my own Christmas paper. Usually I scrounge up packing paper and what not, butthis year has been pretty thin on the packing paper front. So, I bought a cheap pad of newsprint for about $5. I then started to design a variety of stencils. X's, O's, some cool squares and what i'm calling black eye'd peas. I don't have pics of all of them since I spent 2 days designing them and not cutting them.I certainly didn't have time to use them making paper, go figure. This weekend Christiw and I will clean off the kitchen table, get out the paint and sharpies and attack some newsprint to make our own wrapping paper. (I have to say I've also convinced a bunch of my friends to do this with their kids, or so they claim.)

Recycled Stickers

As a compulsive hoarder and trash picker I have many of my coworkers trained to bring me goodies- things they know I'll use in a creative recycled way. I had a coworker who used to send my way out of date and unused marketing stickers. I have rolls and rolls of them. I often use them to secure packages in lue of tape. I mean, after all, tape is expensive. They work well for that purpose.

Those stickers are all paper, meant to be torn and not last a long time. She also gave me 60 small 2x2 inch vinyl stickers, which are meant to last and last. I've been randomly sticking them all over the place- planners etc, as is. Randomly I thought to myself, "Supposedly the provocrap crapcut can cut vinyl with ease, I wonder if I can control it well enough to cut one of my shapes out of these little stickers?"

Lo and behold, hell's yeah, I figured it out, and I have 30 of these little sheep.


And then and untold amount of these. I'm telling you, making this work has made me unbelieveably happy.

So far I've only stuck these to my sketchbooks and my coworker's computer...

This led me to think, what could I do with those round paper stickers? Since I'm on a sheep kick lately, I cut some sheep out of them...

Not my most inspired thoguth. BUT! Now I'm thinking what IF I painted those round stickers? I know the crapcut will cut through paint as long as it's dry and a thin coat... So maybe I can paint and spray some stickers and get totally custom sheep. (heh< comment if you get the irony of that statement.) This may or maynot be a plot for me to go to Michael's and use my coupon to buy some liquatex spaypaint...

(Also if you haven't snagged the new flickr app for your phone, DO IT NOW, better than instagram!)

A Little More on Flack

This article is a beautiful one about self censorship. I think that at some point we all lose our way toward our personal voice/vision for our own art. Call it authenticity or whatever, but we have to fight to get back to it. Fight for our unique and personal vision to come through.

In the past all you had to fight was yourself, the expectations of critics and your own inner critic. Now we have the machine of the "art" industry pumping out tools and toys for us to use, straight off the shelf.

For me part of the joy of art was learning to make do with what I had and adapting other tools toward my needs.A little gumption and an idea was all I needed to stoke the creative fire already buring inside.

Cutting Stencils

I've gotten a million questions about how I'm cutting my stencils. First I start with an idea then I decide how I'm going to make that work- do I draw it and then shoot a pic or do I create the image in Make the Cut? It all depends on how I want the resulting stencil to look. If I'm going for a wonky slightly off or not perfect look I generally sketch the idea out in a thick ink pen. Like these:

If I want something that is smooth and mechanical looking I'll create the image completely in the computer from either the idea or an photo. Like this:

Then I've got what I call my focal stencils that I create with a combination of hand work and computer editing. These take a lot of time to create.


The easy answer to how I'm cutting my stencils is that I'm using the pixel trace setting in Make the Cut to create a stencil or diecut and then using my cricut to cut.

Please be aware that I'm using a hacked version of Make the Cut. If you purchase a new version of Make the Cut you will not be able to use it with your cricut. Please see this post for why it will no longer work. Though it could be said that Provocrap is a controlling manipulative spouse and that would tell you all you need to know.

 

Flack

I've gotten flack for being more of an arty art journaler than a writing or cute art journaler. I don't do pretty faces with cutesy quotes. Instead I write my heart out and cover it with paint. I let my writing become part of my finished pieces, even these faces that I've been painting, they have been born out of my art journaling process. Not all of these pieces have deep writing behind the paint, but I learned this process through my art journal.

My art journal is my greatest tool in my art making arsenal. Without it, I'm not sure where my art would be today.

In the images below you can see the words peaking through the layers of paint. Sometimes my journal contains simple lists- like the lists of things I ate during a road trip, a list of purchases made one weekend, beers I tried. Other times it's long paragraphs about influences, things I've read, people I've interacted with, gripes with life. I hang my paint on top of these words, not needing to add a quote or make it pretty. My art journal is a place of no fear. I don't always show it, sometimes it's too raw.

My art journal influences my art and is influenced by my art, it's a never ending circle.

Facebook

Facebook changed how it's pages interact with the people who like a business page. We were all good doobies and made our business a page instead of conducting business on our personal profiles or just using a personal page for our art. So FB put the screws to the pages. If I want to reach all 402 people who have "liked" my page I need to pay $5 per post, then they guarantee all 400 people on my page will see it, if I don't pay $5 then only about 130 people see it. Additionally if I go ahead and schedule updates they meterout the number of people who see the posts across all the posts per day so the maximum number of people who see the posts totals 130. Pretty god damn sneaky if you ask me.

I won't be eliminating my use of the Comfortable Shoes Studio page but I won't be using it as much and I'll probably use my blog more. Hopefully I'll be writing more over this winter and spring.

Somethign I can't wait to share with everyone is that I have scored a wall at a local cafe to hang my art. It's not a big space, a spot for 10 or so paintings and the ability to have an opening night. So I'll update you all more on that. It's a long way off, August of 2013, but that's good, I'll be able to get a lot of ready for it.

More Details

I'vebeen painting a few more faces. These are nearing completion. I need to add a few more details and some stencils to the background but for the most part these are done.

New Blades

The new blades I ordered for my cricut let me cut through painted papers. I really like how the cuts look.

More Stencils

I ordered a few roland blades for my provocrap Cricut machine. They are sharper and work better than the Cricut blades. I got 10 for $20, free shipping from this guy on the 'bay. No affiliation, just happy to get blades that work and are cheaper than $5 to $10 a blade.

This is letting me make more cuts. I've done a new series of ovals and circles, much like punchinella, or sequin waste. This time I've been smarter and saved them all, so I can cut them as I wish instead of redoing them again and again.

I also picked up a couple of EF Montana paint pens and replacement tips. I've been filling them with liquitex acrylic ink, awesome, awesome stuff.  You can see their work in the images below. Full review to come.

In other news, I got braces. They hurt, like a lot. More than I expected. A great thing about them is that I can see results already. I had this one tooth I called the "snaggle tooth," and it's already straighter and closer to my other teeth than it was before. Soon enough no one will be asking me on my YT videos if I'm missing teeth. Which, has to be the worst youtube comment I've ever gotten.

More Process, All the Steps

Above is the intitial drawing. Done with a Pitt pen in black. I messed with doing these drawings in gray but like the effect of the black better.
Then I block in light and dark with titanium white and unbleached titanium white.
The layers of warm glaze come first, then I add a layer of blues.
Then a layer of unbleach titanium white glaze. I am missing a step after this, I would add a layer of very very transparent warm and cool glazes on TOP of the unbleached titanium white glaze.
Final details, like the eyebrows and hair with a liner brush and color of the lips are put in last.

Related articles

Glazes

Stencil Process

Roots

More Process of the Glaze Portraits

More Process of the Glaze Portraits

I start with pages like these. I build up a textured base layer of bright vibrant colors.

I look for spots that have interest, like these.

And then I add an area whre my paint will stick, using a mixe of white acrylic and gesso, sometimes just white acrylic.

Sometimes I add more stencils, so they overlap the whtie area.