...And this is why I need to carry more tools...

I used a new Metropolitan pen in the people, but went back to my beloved ancient Sheaffer for the plane...I love the line variety...

It seemed fitting to use a Chinese bent-nib pen on the gorgeous waterfall at the Las Vegas Zen Center; I added text with my 1960s Sheaffer pen, and a touch of watercolor back at our room.

My pens leaked on the plane, so I picked up a few disposables at Desert Art Supply in Henderson Nevada...ooops, this one wasn't waterproof, and lifted somewhat.  I always like to sketch in the early morning in the courtyard where we stay--Hawthorn Inn & Suites in Henderson.

I LOVE the subtlety of graphite--sometimes the emphatic lines of ink just don't cut it for me.  This was one of the bouquets from my sister's memorial bash--we rescued it and took it back to our hotel.  So...needed that Pentel Forte pencil, too.  And of course my watercolors, and a big brush...

Yep, more subtle pencil lines...and used a calligraphy pen on the lettering on the right, but I've decided it can stay home next time...

This was one of the disposable pens I picked up in Henderson...I figured I could sketch on the plane without leakage, if need be.  And I DO like brown ink--so far I haven't found one that works well in a fountain pen for very long (that's also water-resistant.)

Mostly used my new non-leaky Micron Pigma here--I'd meant to pack one at home but forgot.  The bit of the kitty was a colored pencil...I used it on another cat sketch I haven't scanned, too.  This is my sister and brother-in-law's beloved cat, Bohdi.

and I used the colored pencil again here--they're wax-based, don't smear, don't lift when you wash over them.  Plenty of time at the Denver airport to work, so I added color, then a few touches of ink, then a tiny graphite Joseph checking out our plane...

...so actually, there was nothing I'd taken with me that I didn't use, either in sketching or writing...and as usual, a few things I hadn't packed and bought in the art supply store!

My Everyday Journaling Supplies

It's always interesting to see what other artists consider necessary for their everyday journal work, so I thought I'd share mine...this is what survived after a recent trip to Nevada, and granted, I didn't jettison MUCH!  

This is what goes in my purse...which really ISN'T much of a purse, it's my field bag/traveling studio!  My usual retrofitted Prang box at the bottom, an old pencil case with a few tools, a sprayer that doubles as my water supply and the little collapsing bucket above it if I need more (I've never been able to find another one this small!)  Then in upper center the new Sharpie EF white, a couple of Micron Pigmas that don't mind changes in air pressure, a couple of colored pencils for sketching, and two waterbrushes.  (The flat one didn't actually go on the trip but I wished it had...)  A small vial of ink in the tiny bag and a pocket protector full of pens and one mechanical pencil...it all weighs in less than 2 lbs.

My old retrofitted Prang box makes me feel like a kid!  I've replaced the round brush with a better one from Black Gold, and that's a bamboo skewer for drawing with, like a pen.  These are my usual colors, except I've taken out the green: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cathy-johnson/8126242177/in/set-72157604173444404

Here's what goes in the pencil box, from the top...a 1" flat with the end sharpened, a #8 travel brush, a small bristle brush (also sharpened) I use for painting, spatter, or lifting; a toothpick and another skewer, a piece of credit card for scraping and the lightest possible pencil sharpener for those colored pencils, a piece of sharpened dowel rod and a small dip pen we found on eBay.  It's an antique!  (Sometimes a little piece of white vinyl eraser, too...)

Pocket protectors work great to corral my pens and a pencil!

A lovely array of pens and points...from left, my ancient Sheaffer, a Noodler's Creaper, a Creaper body with a Hero bent nib in it, another old Sheaffer for smoooooth writing (ok, I could leave it home), my Platinum Carbon Desk Pen cut short so it will cap, and my favorite Pentel Forte mechanical pencil.  (Here's the post in which I tell how I cut the Carbon Desk Pen: http://artistsjournalworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/yet-another-new-pen.html)

Yum.  Even if they DID leak in the plane...

It all fits in here...

And the front zipper pocket is all that actually acts as a purse!  Drivers' license and credit cards (and our wedding picture!), pills, salt and pepper, cell phone, mirror, comb, nail clipper...and when I'm not flying, a TINY Swiss Army knife...

Could I do with less?  Of course.  Am I likely to?  Um...not till the arthritis gets worse!  I might leave out that one pen...

I'll share some of my sketches in another post!

Is the Artist's Journal the Artist's Art?

When Cathy asked the question "How do you use YOUR Journal?" in her last post, I was right in the middle of asking myself that very questions because I had been witnessing changes in the answer - for me - and for so many other art journalers.

I first came to art journaling in 2005.

It had been three years since we closed our first series of art galleries in Santa Fe due to 9/11 and other wounds to our tourism at that time.

I kept painting for awhile and then one day, I just stalled.

I read the wonderful book, Art and Fear, and figured out that I lacked a destination for my art. I did not want to paint for other galleries, online was not a good option at that time, and I surely did not want to fill my home closets with watercolors no one would share.

I had been keeping written journals sporadically for several years, but I never liked revisiting them. They just reminded me that I had never found answers to the things I would whine about in those journals. Blah!

I had sketchbooks, of course, like any practicing artist does, but they were very haphazard and I didn't like revisiting them because they just reminded me of all the painting ideas that I had not acted upon. Blah!

I had also been collecting a stack of blank books and mulling over the idea of visual journaling, and one day, that whole thing hit.

I could make my art in my journals - THEY would be my destination.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then and my love of art journaling is legend. I have not only continued with illustrated journaling, I have taught a few thousand other folks to love it too.

When I discovered the Stillman & Birn Beta Sketchbooks, I found my perfect journal - paper second only to my true love, Arches 300lb coldpress.

Then, while hosting an art jourrnaling retreat in Tubac, Arizona in March of this year, another love affair hit.

There is only one small art supply store in the village of Tubac, and they carry only one brand of paints - M. Graham.

After 40+ years as a watercolorist, I had never encountered this brand. Strange, but true.

Having forgotten my yellow ochre tube - critical for painting adobe things, I bought a tube of the M. Graham.

I could not have imagined that any watercolor could be so different! Smooth and creamy and so pigment-loaded, I was surprised my brush could move!

That tube has grown to 33 tubes and I am more in love every day with this duo - S&B Beta and M. Graham.

One day, I found myself looking at a finished "painting" right there in my Beta book . .

and another

These are from a series called "Strange Neighborhoods". The first is titled "Gatherings" and the second "Mending Fences".

I showed my husband because I am supposed to be creating paintings for our current gallery in Santa Fe (we can't quit, it seems).

"How are we going to frame those?" he asked? "Tear the pages out?"

"Over my dead body," I said. "We would have to tear my arm off to get them."

So, we sell signed giclées.

The surprise to me was that the art in my journals can be the "serious" stuff if I want it to be. Well . . . ok, as a whimsical Surrealist, my work is seldom serious, but it can be considered "finished" anyway.

I recently took the first session of "Sketchbook Skool" to see what it would be like and to see LOTS of other people's journal and sketchbook pages.

I really enjoyed it, and it reinforced the fact that sketchbooks and journals are now being considered an art form in their own right. I hope this is an idea that continues to grow!

jessica

http://wisdomwoman.com/whatever

Reposting this longish essay about the uses of an artist's journal.

Hello everyone,

Back three years ago when I posted this, there were many fewer people following this blog. Since the question comes up again and again, I thought I'd repost this. It's still my answer to the question about the uses of an artist's journal. My uses. My journal. Maybe yours, too?

Back then I mischaracterized/misunderstood Kate's journals... they ARE pretty and they do have lots of finished sketches, but, as she has often pointed out since then, they are way more than pretty and often NOT polished and arty. ;D.

I hope this is helpful. I could TRY to say this all again in a different way, but I decided not to ;D.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

My big fat black journal

I’ve long been a fan of the kind of beautiful illustrated journal that Kate Johnson and others, like Roz Stendahl, Pam Johnson Brickell, and Danny Gregory, to give a few examples, produce.

Theirs are visually arresting books---almost art objects in themselves. They feature well-designed pages and handsome lettering. Often the books themselves are handmade, the paper of good quality.

While there may be entries of a personal nature, they are not so private that no thought is given to the appearance of the page for possible public sharing, even if the sharing is of a limited nature. In general, text and image are both important. The pages themselves may not be pristine. In Roz’s, Kate’s and Danny’s books, there’s lots of experimentation going on and many quick, quick sketches, but the overall effect seems to be of a well-made, nicely designed artifact. (I say ‘seems,’ because I have only seen these journals on line.)

My own illustrated journals, until recently, were different from these. They were more sketchbook than conventional journal, without a strong textual presence.

In those pages, I’ve practiced drawing because I LOVE it and so that I could become better at it. I’ve taught myself how to use watercolor, and, in more conventional journal-writing fashion, I’ve tried to get down on paper, in images, the important events and people in my life.

From the time I was about 8, though, I’ve written in diaries and journals. My sketchbooks were a thing apart from those written records of my life. For the past 6 years, my concentration on drawing and producing my blog Laurelinesput an end to my journal keeping.

A few months ago, I turned to writing in a journal again. In taking up journaling once more, I remembered the lessons I learned years ago from the powerful, transformative book, The New Diary by Tristine Rainer. Rainer advocates journaling as a means to communicate with oneself, to develop creativity, to solve problems, to enrich the inner life.

Emphasis is on freedom of expression, expanding consciousness, finding a state of flow ---and getting all of this down on paper any way you can. Well-designed pages? Good paper? Nice lettering? Well, unless you operate that way instinctively, intuitively, with your eyes closed, without censors or brakes... no.

When I restarted my journaling life, I had not planned to include imagery. Or not planned NOT to.
I just bought a big blank book (big enough to allow me to scrawl across a page) with mediocre paper (something that the sketching me would not have been happy about) and started writing.

And images appeared, there, along with the words!

Not as illustrations, but more the rough lineaments of daydreams or nightmares, the quick capturing of something my eye fell on as I paused in my writing, time outs from hard thinking, notes for paintings and projects, sometimes plain old documentation, too. The images are more fleshed out than doodles, yet only rarely are they anything close to polished art pieces!

The more the images appeared, the more I gave way to their flow. Now, I can hardly wait to see what will happen next!
Why I don’t KNOW what will happen next is because this new journal of mine is about process and not product. It’s about communication with the self, not with others.
And it’s about pulling together the various aspects of myself---myself the artist, myself the writer, myself the mother, wife, friend and all the rest... all in one place, between two covers of a regular old, big, black, blank book.

It’s an illustrated journal, but it doesn’t look like Kate’s, or Roz’s, or Danny’s, or Pat’s. It’s rough-hewn, private, with buckled and splattered pages, loaded with crossed-out words and wiggly arrows. It works for me. I write about it here as a way to show there are many ways to make this thing we call an illustrated journal and to say that maybe something LIKE this may work for you, too.

You might also like:

Interview #5--meet Laura Frankstone of Laurelines!

My big fat black journal, revisited

Interview #8--Roz Stendahl!

Linkwithin

Meaningful Journaling

A peaceful day in the backyard, spring green and our baby dragon smiling at us.

Recording a celebration--family birthdays and Easter, all rolled into one!

My presence necklace, a slow, contemplative sketch to help center me...

A sketch from my husband's hospital room, after his cancer surgery...my journal helped keep me calm.  (And he is fine, now, thank you! This was from a few years ago.)

Keeping an artist's journal can be life-changing...at any age.  Far beyond making art, creating a pretty page, trying a new technique or exploring a medium like watercolor or pen and ink, it can help us to cope, learn, experience, and honor our lives.  It can help us rejoice, process, calm.

We can discover the myriad of small things that we are grateful for--just those gratitude lists alone can be life-changing.  Yes, I repeat a lot, as I return again and again to these lists--I AM grateful for the things large and small that make up my days.  Fresh coffee.  Cats.  Memories.  Books, art supplies, watercolors, a pen with a butter-smooth nib.  Music.  Mindfulness.  Meditation.  Flowers.  Laughter.  Friends.  Options.  Nature.  My walker, when I need it.  Leftovers!

My husband's love and support.

Journaling itself. 

How do you use YOUR journal?  What are you grateful for today?

More on Bookbinding from our friend Shirley!

Former student Shirley Hememd got the bookbinding bug and has sone some amazing work!  Check her blog post for tons of inspiration, and let her know in a comment if you'd like to see more like this.  She's done some adventurous work!

http://www.paperandthreads.com/2014/05/making_watercolor_sketchbooks_2.php

Quick Sketching in Color

This is a little video I did for my Quick Sketching in Color mini-class...it's been private for just my students until now, but I decided to share it with you!

It's my quick and easy accordion journal I carry in my vehicle for sketching wherever I am.  I'm not much on shopping, so I do a LOT of "parking lot sketches" while Joseph does our business.

Sometimes I can add color on the spot, sometimes I exercise my color memory and do it later...that's what I did for this demo!  Either way works, it's your journal!

Check out the class info, here: http://cathyjohnson.info/sketchingincolor.html 

(By the way there are TWELVE videos in that class!  Not bad for 4 lessons...)

More on a different kind of quick and easy journal here on YouTube, or see my CD, here.  It includes both these types, plus ring-bound, book cloth, making covers and more!