Composites...

I usually end up doing several composite pages when I travel...it seems to squeeze more of the experience into my journal.

I usually try to do one as we're leaving, at hour home airport...my fellow passengers, the tower, whatever...

This is the view from our hotel...you can't see the pencil sketch at upper left, in this photo...

This place has a nice big heat/AC unit below the window--it makes a great studio tabouret!

As the days passed, I added Joseph at the computer (his morning habit) and the cat sleeping on someone's car in the parking lot. 

Another kind of composite involves doing many views of the same subject...in this case sketches of my father-in-law's rescue beagle...

But you can combine anything you want!  Maggie was lazing in the shade near the fence, so I sketched her and the top of the neighbor's house.  (Good thing they have this nice thick masonry wall, beagles are DIGGERS.

You can add anything you want to pages like this...business cards, notes, reminders, photos...but I always enjoy how they catch something of the days.

Capturing Special Events

We were at a family wedding in the Ozarks over the weekend--my godson Aaron and his new wife, Bonnie. It was two big, wonderful, blended families, with spouses, kids, food, music and all those things that make for a lovely event.  Composite pages work well, in a case like this.

I'm happier sketching than taking photographs, though after I got most of my fast, rough pencil sketches done, I DID manage a few photos, and youngest godchild Nora let me work from a couple of the great pics she shot...the sketches were mostly quick, unfinished gesture sketches that I intended to add color to when I got home, and I wish I'd scanned THAT stage.

You can see the pencil sketches on this page, still partly unpainted, and the beginning washes (except Bonnie, who was almost finished here...I had to work from a photo I took of her, because I was too far back to sketch.)

Here's the second spread, partly finished, with Celtic knots since they exchanged silver knot pendants...I tried to keep the washes simple and fresh, as much as possible.

Munchkins Max, Miriya, and Finn ran around like mad things after the wedding--all that pent--up energy!  So I cut a footprint stamp from an old eraser to represent their romps.  You can see I've added more detail here...

Footprints and details on this page, too...and you can see Max running madly between the two sketches of middle godchild Rachel in her cool striped dress.

I wasn't thrilled with the busy area at upper left, so I washed some of the stamps back out and did a soft, wet in wet wash.  (As you might guess, the bride's color choice was purple!)  Things seemed to need a bit of definition and punching up, so I added a few ink accents here and there.

And finally got the nerve to add the lettering!  I decided this page could be a bit less busy (ya THINK??) so let some of the figures be ink or only partly painted.  I like it...I think!

And of course I wasn't able to sketch an 8th of the people there--in a case like this we just have to concentrate on what we're closest to, what catches the eye or tells a story--as well as who stays still for 5 seconds!!  (Happily I wasn't getting paid to record the wedding, or the bride's family might have been seriously miffed!  That's Bonnie's sweet mama and her brother manning the food table at upper right.  But of course I only managed to capture one of Aaron's sisters (twice!)...he has four.

They're not the BEST designed pages I ever did--they're awfully busy and crowded--but they DO recall the happy chaos of the event!

The more peaceful, contemplative bits were done from the window of our trailer in the early morning, before the merry-go-round started up!

Meet Nina Johansson--Interview #10

Meet our friend, Swedish artist and journal keeper Nina Johannson!  I was delighted when she agreed to be part of the book and subsequently, this blog.  Nina's work always has a clean feeling and beautiful design, as you can see on her website/blog. (More in our initial post, HERE--as always you can click on the images to see them larger.)

She experiments with new techniques, colors and tools, and generously shares with all of us on her blog--it's one of my favorites.

Nina records her travels in her journals, as many of us do...her skill really shows, and invites us right along with her.

I asked Nina to tell us a bit about herself...and here's her introduction:

”Hometown” is a tricky word for me. I was born in Gävle in Sweden in 1970, then then family moved north to Umeå when I was nine. If someone asks, I call Umeå my hometown, though I still have a soft spot in my heart for Gävle. When I was twenty six, I thought I knew Umeå by heart, and couldn´t quite find my future there, so I moved to Stockholm – a dream I had had for years then. Now Stockholm has become my hometown too, so these days it seems I am ”going home” no matter which direction I´m travelling in Sweden.

This is one of the wonderful journal page sketches from Nina's kitchen window...she draws it in all seasons.

I have always drawn, but my formal training in arts began in 1991, at a school north of Skellefteå. I went there for two years, at first mostly to try it out, since I didn´t quite feel at home in the natural science field where I had began my higher education. After that, there was no way back, I felt so at home. Almost all education I have gone through since then has had something to do with art or other creative stuff. I have gone through art classes, went through an education in digital image editing, pre-press and layout, and finally went through the Visual Arts teacher education program at University College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) in Stockholm. Since then I have been working as a teacher of arts, design, computer graphics, film making and web design, and I keep drawing and painting as much as I can in my spare time.


--------------------


Thanks, Nina, good to "meet" you!  And now let's jump right into the interview...


Q.

How long have you been journaling? Did you always do an art journal, and how has it evolved?

A.
No, I didn´t always journal. I would say I started journaling, or drawing in sketchbooks instead of on loose papers, some time in 2005. I have always been drawing, in pads, on loose papers, on big and small surfaces, even in sketchbooks, but I only drew a few pages and then went on to some other kind of paper. But in 2004-5 drawing became more and more important to me, and I had a feeling that I should start working more consciously, and collect my drawings in a better way, keep track of them, not spread them around so much. And as soon as I started drawing in a book, and jotting down the date every now and then, it became a journal, not 'just drawings'. It became in a way a chronological record of my days. Not every day, and not
everything I do, but still.

And as every other person I know who draws in a sketchbook, I remember everything around the drawings, like the place I did them in, the weather, the smell in the air on that day, what people were saying around me and so on. I also started drawing much more when i switched to books, because it´s so easy and fast to just do a little drawing and then continue later if I don´t finish it. Drawing on loose papers often makes me feel like I have to finish something, or that the result should be of good quality. My sketchbooks are very free from pressure, I don´t try to accomplish that much in them.


Q. 
How does this kind of work complement your career or job?

A.
I draw a lot of inspiration from my work, since it has a lot to do with art and creative processes, and the sketchbooks/journals let me spill all that out in a simple way. I try out different techniques, I sometimes do my student´s exercises just to try them out, and I also pick ideas from my sketchbooks to my teaching. But the sketchbooks are also a place to let off steam. At work I have to plan everything, prepare material and be ready when a class starts. In my sketchbooks I hardly plan anything, I just grab a pen and start drawing. In many ways my work and my sketchbook habit are opposites, and I need them both. They balance each other.


Q.
What do you enjoy most?

A.
Oh wow, hard question... I think getting in "the zone" while drawing. You know, when you concentrate so much on what you do, that you loose track of time, it´s just you, the pen and that subject you are trying to capture. It´s very soothing, calming and afterwards I always feel like I wake up, or come back to the world, somehow. Must be what meditation is for some people.

Q.
Do you have a favorite medium or approach?

A.
Ink pens, preferably fountain pens, and watercolours are my favorites. I love trying out other techniques and materials too, and I often do, but I always return to ink and watercolours.

Q.

You do these wonderful composite/montage pages when you’re busy—your vecka pieces, etc. (Does that mean “week” in English?) What inspired you to do those?

A.
Simply lack of time. And yes, ”vecka” means ”week”. Sometimes it´s hard to find the time to do more elaborate drawings, because you´re swamped with work or whatever, and then I just thought it would be better to draw very little almost every day than drawing nothing for many days. And if I do that on the same page and keep to the same technique or some kind of theme for a whole week, I´m going to end up with something that looks very well thought-out even though it isn´t. And it´s really fun to see where you end up if you just keep on patiently working on the same page for several days.

Q.
You used stencils and texturing tricks in your paintings, do you ever use
them in your journals? (Any of the images you sent me?)

A.
I haven´t used much of that at all in my journals, though lately I have put a few tiny simple stencils in a pocket at the back of my sketchbook to see if I can do something interesting with them.

My paintings are quite different to my sketchbook pages. I´m sure there are things in both that make them recognizable as my work, but they ARE different. And I have been thinking a lot about how to combine these two ways of working, either by bringing my painting manner into my journals or vice versa. I´m trying to experiment with that now that I´m working on a new series of paintings.

Q.
How do you decide to design a page?

A.
I usually don´t decide anything, I just start drawing. After a while I might decide to have a line around the whole drawing, or a bit of text in it or whatever, but I never plan that ahead. Or at least very
seldom.

Perhaps when you're as talented as Nina, design just happens!

-------------

As noted, Nina will be teaching at the second Urban Sketchers Symposium  in Lisbon this July. She'll be giving a workshop with fellow urban sketcher José Louro --it'll we be terrific!

Evolving pages...

Journal pages evolve and take on a new life from what you'd originally envisioned.  This was going to be a very rough, quick sketch of the pods I found in a couple of square yards behind my shed, but I got fascinated by shapes and textures and ended up doing much more detail than I'd planned.  I thought it would be fun to do the shadows, though...and then, of course, some lettering for the date, and the notes and block of color to the right, and a border, and spatters, and.....................

Then I kept looking at that rich maroon of the vinca leaf--it had twined up the tree and made berries for the first time I'd noticed...

And it just seemed to need that touch of color.  So...I added the maroon leaves and raw sienna berry husks, and then a little warm spatter to pick up the maroon, and punched up the lettering, and....

I THINK I'm done, but who knows.  Yesterday I went back and tweaked a page I did weeks ago!

Evolving pages...

I get fascinated by the oddest things...a couple of these misshapen bits of wood surfaced when we built my little shed/studio . I have no idea why they look this way, but they're knotty and bumpy and seem to have branches or roots growing sideways out of the branch.  I THINK it's redbud, perhaps part of the root system--so had to sketch it, paying attention to detail as much as possible, but trying to keep it clean.

I drew this carefully with the fine medium gray Stabilo pen...I like these but sometimes wish they were waterproof.  This time I decided to take advantage of their liftability and blended the shadow areas with clear water and my waterbrush.

Detail of root piece, after touching the fine lines with clear water.

I was working with a fine, gray watersoluble pen it was so nice and luminous...it just seemed like the rest of the page should be open and airy as well.  I decided not to use color at all.

The date follows the shape of the root piece, and I kept my notes and header minimal.  The block of text at lower right balances the airy header.

The amazing bit of wood is definitely the star of this journal page!

Now, maybe someone can identify it for me.

Lettering for your journal?

How important is this to you?

Does anyone have a favorite book on hand lettering?  We've seen some wonderful examples already, and that was one of the big winners in our poll at right., on what our readers would like to see on this blog (by the way it will be open for a year, so vote any time you like!)

I'm practicing my own brush lettering because I like the contrast between words and images, and how they can complement one another.  Sometimes I had a colorful or harmonizing header, sometimes not...

It can be a lovely design element, providing balance as well as adding information--several of our correspondents use it to wonderful--and varied!--effect.  Color, style, position, of your letters can all work when designing a pleasing page.

We featured this one in THIS POST, along with a few suggestions for further reading in the comments, but what's YOUR favorite?

This one looks interesting--has anyone used it?  (You can click on the image to get at the "look inside" feature on this one.  It's got a lovely cover, but it's fun to poke around, too!)







Do you use lettering on your pages?  Do you want to?  Do you feel it adds to a page or detracts? Do you care about what your letters look like, or are you just interested in making notes on what you see, think, feel?

Let's open this for discussion!

* NOTE: I've added Roz's link from her comment below so you can click on it directly...don't know if you can make live liniks in comments, but here it is:  http://rozwoundup.typepad.com/roz_wound_up/2008/11/calligraphy-from-traditional-to-funky.html?cid=139517498

The Art of Collage (Designing the Page)

Imaginary Trips' Parisian Cafe Collage

Hi, there! I'm Laure Ferlita. I'm so excited to be one of the artists in Kate's book. (Thanks, Kate!) I host Imaginary Trips, and we often work on collaging bits and pieces of art into a cohesive whole. Designing a collage page can be a fun way of combining several quick vignettes from a holiday/vacation, a walk around the neighborhood or simply different days of the week.

Even on Imaginary Trips, you don't always get a great seat at the cafe or perhaps your view is blocked. Other times, you may be moving so quickly that all you have time for is to snap a picture and promise yourself you'll paint it later. You arrive home to open all your images only to find that what you thought was going to be a super shot didn't translate into such a great photo after all.

It's quite fun as well as a challenge to weave unrelated elements together to tell a new story! By using brief moments wisely and/or utilizing the "good" parts of photo images from a holiday, we can often come up with an interesting journaled page. It may only have meaning to us, or it may be entertaining for the viewer, depending on our goal for the page.

The image above is a collaged page that combines elements from 4 images in and around Paris. Together, they appear to tell a "story" of a bored bistro waiter and a cat near a Metro sign when in fact the waiter was very busy, the cat was no where to be found and the bistro sign was on the other side of the city!

Some of the guidelines I use to create a collage page:

• Use like colors even if they are not in the actual place or image you’re adding to your journal. In the example, the colors repeat in the red signs as well as the waiter and sign post. The cat and the wall are similar in color too.
• Ff you’re working from photos, remember, this is your artistic journal you’re working in—it doesn’t have to look like the photo! Interpret the image as you remember it!
• Repeat similar shapes where possible. The rectangle of the Metro sign and Bistro sign echo each other. The long pole of the Metro sign and length of the waiter repeat each other.
• Keep the time of day consistent (day or night). The greens of the trees in the background of the Metro sign give you the impression of daylight as does the light around the waiter.
• Keep strong directional light consistent (cast shadows). 
• Remember to play and have fun—these are guidelines and not rules!

There are several ways to approach a collaged journal page. You can wait until you're home from vacation and pull bits and parts from various photos, you can start a page and let it develop on its own as you travel around, or create a "theme" for the page. Look for unusual signage, people wearing hats, animals you see, flowers, birds, windows, etc. The ideas are endless!

I hope this will inspire you to try your hand at building a few collaged journal pages! For more tips, please download a pdf on collaging here.

Work fast--revisited!

So this is how it evolved...notes, information, more sketches.  I loved getting out the binoculars and seeing the robins and starlings drinking and bathing in my neighbor's rain gutter.  HAD to add that to the page!

Is it finished?  I guess we'll see...

Designing Pages

Often, I don't start out to design a page...it just evolves.  That's the case with these two recent entries.

I was feeling tense and anxious and needed to dump my anxiety someplace...so I just wrote those feelings out.  I chose water-soluble ink for the page on the left, and the next day when I was feeling much better, I washed over the words with clear water.  It reminded me of storm clouds--rather apropos!

I added diagonal streaks of rain and a bit of extra watercolor to obscure some of the words, then added the descriptive caption at the bottom of the page!

I'd gotten some grease on the page on the right--NO idea how--so I wasn't sure about taking the chance with an actual image or anything I might care about.  I decided that was the perfect time to practice my brush lettering!  I just filled the page with all shapes and sizes...fun, and I am learning a little more control.

Maintaining Privacy when you want to

There are a lot of ways to do this--Hannah Hinchman, whose interview will appear later in this series, once recommended writing very, very small--I believe that was in her first book, A Life In Hand: Creating the Illuminated Journal, still my favorite book on journaling techniques.

Liz Steel, who was interviewed HERE, sometimes glues a flap over a private bit, that way she can lift it if she wants and do more journaling right on the flap.

I used a paper CD envelope in one of my journals, as you see above.  I glued it down by the flap, so I could put things I wanted to see in the envelope; it will still open by folding it to the right, allowing me to maintain a bit of privacy if I wish and store favorite pieces of ephemera while I'm at it.

One of my students wrote her feelings out in all directions on the page, overlapping lines so eventually there was no way you could read them.  It was beneficial for her to use her journal to purge negative feelings, but she didn't necessarily even want to be able to read them later, herself.

I gave it a shot when I was frustrated with dealing with bureaucracy and it made an interesting page!

You can collage or paint over a whole page, if you really just needed to get it out of your system but would prefer not to preserve it for posterity.

Or you can photograph your pages and play around with blur or the soft focus in your photo-editing software as I did on the rainy image above, too...everyone has cranky days!

PLEASE, feel free to add your favorite ideas in the comments here!

Accordion-fold journal--video

We talked about how you can make images that go across the fold in this type of book, tying the images together and forming a more or less cohesive whole...this video I did a few years ago shows how that works.

Designing Pages

Here's a page that kind of designed itself...I had a tan page bound next to a page of white watercolor in this journal, and I didn't want to run the image across the spread as I often do...but in order to get the size I wanted for this old china panther my dad always had on his dresser, I put it diagonal on the page.

It was a tricky image to capture...it's very shiny black ceramic, so every time I moved or the light changed, the highlights and shadows were all different.  (No WONDER people work from photos...the shapes stay put!)  I mapped out the lights and darks, used a little liquid mask on some, then painted in varied, reflected colors as an underwash.  When that was dry, I added two more coats, one of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna for mid darks, and then one that actually incorporated some of Dr. Ph Martin's black liquid watercolor. 

Finally, I resorted to gouache for the highlights and called it done enough!

The diagonal shape inspired me...no need to keep the letters parallel to the sides of the page, why not follow that strong diagonal?

And so, I did...and told the story of the panther, and my dad, and the things I chose to keep when he passed away.  (No one ELSE wanted this crazy old thing!)

Hence, my dad's Legacy.

(I've been complaining about my lettering and decided it wasn't going to get any better without PRACTICE, so I added "legacy" in quinacridone gold.)

Recording Life Events

One of the most important things to do with your journal, I believe, is to record the events in our lives.  Not just the fun or pretty stuff, not just make an interesting page or a piece of art, but to pay attention.  To be present to our own lives.  To respect the hours and days.

As my friend and longtime inspiration Hannah Hinchman, author of my favorite journaling book, A Life In Hand: Creating the Illuminated Journal, wrote: "We have won a moment in the unfolding universe. Doesn't that warrant comment?" 

Indeed it does.

(And by the way, Hannah is one of the artists included in the upcoming book; her interview will be up here before long.  Find her artwork on Picasa and her delightful books on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and more!)

My sweet husband had a bit of preventive maintenance at our local hospital this week, and I find it calming to sketch rather than try to read.  I'm not a television watcher, so paying attention, noticing, sketching works for me, no matter what the circumstance.  I take notes, right on my sketches, of things the doctor says, recommendations, results and so forth.

Not a lot of thought given to composition on this page...just fitting things in as I could.  I switched from Prismacolor colored pencils to a technical pen because it was more precise and I could get more on the page!  The border at top satisfied my need for "design."

On the images above, I'd imagined we would not be there that long, so I was going to just fill one page in my journal.  And fill it I did!  I kept sketching, and sketching, and sketching...and eventually gave it up and did two more pages.  The one at top was the last one of the day...

This is somewhat the type of journal sketch known as "reportage" drawing...real-time events as they unfold, telling it like it is.  Here is one definition of the term...

Designing Pages

Hi all...since so many of you voted for this topic, here's the first!

There are all kinds of ways to design your pages--often, we find that we don't even start out thinking in those terms, but just let them develop as we go along.  That's how I work most often!

There are almost as many ideas on page design as there are journal keepers doing it--so we'll have a post here occasionally on what we like and what we do.  Sometimes one simple image is enough; some people use borders or lettering, sometimes graphs work.  Nina Johansson, one of our correspondents, fills a page as she goes along, on a busy week--a little bit each day.  The result is amazingly pleasing!

I like to think in terms of the information I want down there, whether it's something I plan to share, an informational page, or just a need to DO it, for my own sake.  I try to keep balance, harmony and a pleasing variety of sizes in mind, if I'm paying attention to design...

...and sometimes I don't!  Just "get 'er done!"

So...here are a couple of recent pages and how they developed...

A SINGLE, SIMPLE IMAGE

The other day a strange bird alighted outside the French doors...it was somewhat backlit and I didn't realize what it was till I got the binoculars.  It's a brown-headed cowbird, a rather nasty pushy bird that takes over the nests of other birds, laying its eggs there.  The larger hatchlings often crowd out the smaller babies.  But--it was fun to see it, so I grabbed the closest dark pencil and did a quick sketch.

I decided to add color, so moved over to the desk and my watercolors!  

This was mostly wet in wet--but I loved the gloss and reflected sky color on the bird's head...

He had a lovely iridescence to him, so I did a little underpainting of the blues and greens, and added part of his perch.

I started adding the dark to the bird's body, using a mixture of burnt sienna and ultramarine.  I'd been complaining that I couldn't do calligraphy worth beans, so figured lately I needed to actually TRY.  I chose colors that complimented the bird, though it would have been nice to make the word "brown", well, BROWN.

I decided a subtle border and some spatters would help hold the page together and contain it...again, using a color that harmonized.  The spatter helps cover a place where I had my hand in the paint!  And you can see I'd started to sketch another bird head, but he flew off...a few notes begin to pull this page together.

More notes and information--the notes were places to balance the composition a bit as well as to provide information.

So...this is a very simple page, overall, but I like it!  (Need to practice my calligraphy more though.<:-))


A MORE COMPLEX TWO PAGE SPREAD

This spread is much more complex--pretty busy, really!  If you have a collection of images like this, you need to put a bit more thought into how to pull it together, to create a bit of flow and unity.

This one came about when I was doing very quick sketches at Eagle Days on Saturday--mostly ink gesture sketches, since I couldn't get very close to the big birds.  I didn't worry about placement, size or anything else, just sketched as fast as I could!

After we left the hall where the live birds were, we went to the nearby woodhenge.  I sat on a log in the winter sun and took my time sketching, on the opposite page.  While there, I picked up the bone fragments you see in the circle--remains of an eagle's meal, I'm sure.  All this was done with a technical pen, in black, and the images to across the gutter a bit, to tie them together.  Fish bones go over onto the landscape, posts, shore and water cross over in the other direction...

Back home, I sketched the bones and started adding color and more notes; I made the two pages harmonize as much as possible, using the same washes on both sides of the spread.

The circle was added later, with a template, to contain the bones and unify the spread.

I'd done one REALLY bad sketch, in a hurry, so I collaged on the Missouri Department of Conservation logo over it--they'd been presenters, and the colors went well!

The left side seemed to need something, so I added the background blue--same color as the frozen lake...

A bit more calligraphy and a partial border of "feathers" at upper left, and I was happy with it!

(These are two very different papers, by the way.  I bind my own books and don't really worry about facing pages.  This is HP on the left and a quite textured watercolor paper on the right.  The ink and the watercolor went on differently, but I didn't care.  I find it instructional!)

So...these are just a couple of ideas; there will be a lot more, both in the book and here!  (And in fact there are two PDFs on my CD at right on Design Ideas with lots of suggestions.)