The Outsiders
Also posted on BookCrossing.
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin
The Nanny Diaries
On the audio version: Roberts is an okay narrator, but it took me a while to get into the groove of her slightly too-fast monotone.
Also posted on BookCrossing.
Hey Postcard Lovers
To my postcard-loving readers:
From time to time I will be doing more art experiments, and many of them will be on postcard-sized paper because I seem to enjoy the smaller canvas. I have absolutely nothing to do with most of these cards beyond stuffing them in an accordion file and forgetting about them. So I figure I might as well mail them. Yesterday’s experiment has already been mailed out, but if you could like to receive any of my future experiments, please let me know. I can’t promise it’ll be beautiful but it will be original. And if my mailing list is short enough, you’ll receive cards multiple times. (Though if you’re outside the USA, it’ll depend heavily on the current status of my wallet.)
And it won’t just be the experiments. Sometimes I just get a wild hair and decide to start making postcards. Mailart calls and swaps are all well and good but sometimes I feel like being more random than that.
Before you ask, yes, I am already a member of sendsomething and PostCrossing. I do use them from time to time, but I figured maybe somebody out there might be interested in receiving random mail from yours truly and felt safer about giving their address to me than posting it online.
I guess I should mention the obvious: I won’t share/sell/forward your information to anybody. And you don’t have to send anything in return. Just one request: if you throw it in the trash, please don’t tell me about it. :)
Eyeshadow Art – An Experiment
I’m going to be in a wedding this summer and I realized as I was going through my makeup that none of it had been worn since my own wedding some four and a half years ago, which meant that the very newest stuff dated from then and quite a bit of it was much, much older. I hate throwing things away, especially when they’ve barely been used, but it was time. So I decided to experiment with the makeup as art supplies.
I used watercolor paper (more specifically, watercolor postcards). I figured the more texture on the paper, the more likely it was for the makeup to stick at all, and I think I was right. Since I was working only with the makeup I already owned, and I never wear makeup, my selection was pretty limited: Lancome Colour Focus 4Dreaming
It didn’t work out so well.
The makeup was all more or less destroyed in the process of doing this, and I made a mess. (The latter is hardly surprising; I can manage to make a mess with a gluestick. It’s a talent.) The trouble with using makeup on paper is that you need a lot of it for it to really show up, and if you use anything non-powder like lipstick or mascara or eyeliner, the contrast is too sharp. If I were to do this again, I would start with a much broader palette of colors. Then I would choose to draw something that is in no way associated with makeup. And skip the mascara.
But at least now I don’t feel so bad about throwing it all in the trash.
WG 2010-19: Getting Graphic
This week’s WG is about graphic novels. Now, despite the fact that I’m married to a webcomic artist, my experience with comics is extremely limited. I am slowly (oh, so slowly) working my way through the Death Note
My to-be-read pile has quite a few goodies, however, including The Crow
I am also, ostensibly, writing my own graphic novel. As of this writing the story, dialogue, and storyboarding is all finished. All that’s left is the actual drawing. You know, just a minor step.
Rapid Sketching
My husband specifically requested I scan and post more of my sketches, and I’m diving straight into the deep end with these.
Sometimes, for practice, I’ll grab a random pen and sketch quickly in some random notebook. No fancy pencils or sketchpads, just plain old ink and paper. I usually work from photographs, since they’re convenient and I feel more comfortable with them than drawing from life. (I know I just committed a major sin in the art world. Forgive me; I’m a novice. If I don’t have a photo I usually end up just doodling aimlessly.) A few weeks ago I was at a coffee shop with a friend while she studied for her Physics exam. I was ostensibly there to answer questions, but she ended up not needing me (and later thanked me for providing my Aura of Science). So I decided to pull out a ballpoint pen and draw. What I drew was not what one would call polished or even particularly attractive, but it was fun.
weird cat logo
Simply terrifying.
Lesson learned: closer objects, like eyes, should be larger than those farther away
She's a man, baby!
This one sent my friend into paroxysms of laughter
Needless to say, these aren’t finished products. I’ve never been very good about the whole “sketch something a few times before drawing it for real” practice either, so nothing like these will probably ever be seen ever again. But you know, I’m actually kind of proud of them, since I was just using a crappy pen picked up for free at a convention and a $3 Target notebook. I’ve been rather taken with Michael Nobbs’s inspirational (and free) e-book, and it’s made me think that maybe I should try to “draw my life” – or at least try combining quick sketching with life drawing – more often.
Introducing the Pink Camo Book
I’ve mentioned the “pink camo book” on a number of occasions, and most of the time I think people assume it’s just some random name based on a brand or something. Actually, it’s far less interesting than that: the design – on both the cover and interior pages – is pink camouflage:
I wrote the bad poem in middle school. Shut up.
Pink camo on the inside too
I originally purchased the thing at a Target in Yuma, Arizona, in early 2008. It was the only unlined notebook in the place, as far as I could find, and I’d decided that I wanted to do some art journaling during my 24-day sojourn in the Grand Canyon State. I didn’t end up doing very much drawing, just some doodles during the long overnight tests (I was there for work). I glued in assorted clippings from the places I visited, but otherwise didn’t do much with it – in fact, that trip only filled 9 pages, front and back.
Forgot my book one night, so I pasted in the doodles
Yuma paraphernalia
Since the pink camo book was both cheap and ugly, I felt no compunction about turning it into an “anything” book: I drew it in while bored in the Artists Alley at AUSA or MAGFest; I used it during my brief time with dailydrawing; I used it for character designs for my unfinished graphic novel; I pasted in clippings from brochures whenever I visited somewhere, even just downtown DC. Many of my more recent pages have been of places visited while on snarfari. I now pack it for most trips and enjoy looking through it from time to time.
Philadelphia paraphernalia
Me drawing at AUSA 2009
The concept of trash pages is essential to any art. If you don’t want to put down anything that’s not pristine, you’ll never get started. Everybody needs somewhere to practice. This is why I carry around beat-up old notebooks for writing, and why I have sketchbooks like the pink camo book. I am wary of gorgeous leather-bound journals – I don’t want to mess it up with my crappy doodling and stream-of-consciousness babbling, so it just stays blank forever. That’s not useful. Now if I can just convince myself that all my sketchbooks are actually just sketchbooks and not pre-bound portfolios, I’ll be in business.
Trash pages.
What sort of “trash pages” do you use? Are they barely-started tunes in a folder on your computer? Stitches tried out with remainders? Or are you confident enough to use Moleskine notebooks or expensive yarn? Do trash pages apply to all creative pursuits?
Cutting and Pasting
For whatever reason, I really enjoy cutting up pieces of paper and gluing them to other pieces of paper. This is the essence of gluebooking. It’s a little bit collage and a little bit art journaling and a lot instant gratification.
Before we go on, I will openly admit that I don’t really understand the difference between art journaling, gluebooking, and scrapbooking. While my husband likes to tease me about my scrapbooking habit, I maintain that as long as I’m not using photographs and word balloons, I’m not technically a scrapbooker. But that’s just semantics. In all of them, you are more or less creatively preserving memories.
I’ve never gotten the hang of keeping a sketch journal. I’m notoriously bad about keeping up with any kind of “daily life” photography, which is probably a related failing. Despite spending so much time drawing, I don’t really think in pictures: I think in words. I’ve kept a regular paper diary since November 1991, yet it is extremely rare that I draw or paste anything in those diaries. I don’t know why, exactly, since those are the things I am most likely to want to look at when I go back through them.
As with many things from my childhood, I first started clipping pictures out of magazines because my older sister did it and I wanted to be just like her. She would re-cover folders, notebooks, and binders with her finds. I pasted stuff into old school notebooks, usually with a big X of Scotch tape across it. I’m not sure when it occured to me just how much tape I was wasting by doing that.
These days I use gluesticks because they are relatively non-messy and don’t yellow with age the way many tapes do. They are perhaps not the most durable of adhesives, but they serve my purposes. (And you can buy them in bulk.) I also don’t go out of my way to find things to cut up anymore, the exception being if I need something for a specific project (like the sketchbook project I’m doing now). Plenty of paper matter ends up in my house, not just from unwanted magazine subscriptions and generous swappers who send ephemera, but also from my weird compulsion to pick up brochures, leaflets, and flyers whenever I come across them. I think it’s related to my overwhelming attraction to free stuff.
The Jem Book
Jem book interior
At the moment I have four books in progress. The first is called the pink camo book, which I will describe at length in a later post. The “Jem book”, a notebook with that iconic cartoon popstar on the cover, is my general, catch-all, “I really should do something with these clippings I’ve collected” gluebook. I received it as a gift because I love both journals and Jem, but with only ten lines per page it didn’t seem very useful as a diary. One of my 101/1001 things is to fill the Jem book. As of this writing I have 33 pages (front and back) left. We’ll see.
Jem book interior
Spiral = good
Two of my other in-progress books are travel journals from my recent trips to Japan and Amsterdam. I designated specific journals just for those trips and they follow the same format: handwritten entries done while I was there, the LiveJournal recap printed out and glued in, and the rest of the pages filled with clippings from brochures from the various places I went. I have absolutely no idea when I will finish these. At the moment I have pasted in the LJ entries for both, and in the Japan journal I’ve completed only two places: the Parasite Museum and Sanrio Puroland. But I think they’ll be fun to look through after they’re done.
Amsterdam journal interior
Japan journal - Sanrio Puroland pages
Do you gluebook? Does it sound crazy? Pointless? Or just like scrapbooking?
BookCrossing Convention, April 15-17, 2011
You may have noticed that I’m a member of BookCrossing. (How you would have missed it I’m not sure.) BookCrossing has an International Anniversary Convention every year on the weekend nearest its birthday (April 17) and in 2011 it’s going to be here in Washington, DC.
It’s going to be awesome.
First off, you really have to check out the BC in DC website because it’s gorgeous. Kate’s done such an amazing job.
Second, we’re holding an auction to help raise funds for the convention in order to keep registration fees down.
There are eight themed boxes in all, with bidding open for two weeks each. I’m sure some of my friends would be interested in the Harry Potter box, the Books to Movies box, or the Cooking box. There are a few I’m thinking of bidding on as gifts for other people. You don’t have to be a BookCrosser to win. And if you’re local or I’ll be seeing you in person, you don’t even have to pay shipping – I’ll bring it to you.
In related news, we are collecting Choose Your Own Adventure-type books. They don’t have to be that specific brand and they don’t even have to be children’s books – just the CYOA style. If you come across any at thrift stores or yard sales, please send them our way:
P.O. Box 343
Fairfax Station, VA 22039
USA
(Or you can send them to me if you’d prefer. Either way is fine.)
I am so excited about this convention, I can’t even tell you. Even if you can’t attend or donate or bid in the auction, I’d really appreciate it if you helped spread the word. Link, Digg, Stumble, Tweet, or whatever – just please tell your friends. It’s going to be so much fun.
Absolute Power by David Baldacci
Absolute Power
I am now very interested to see the movie made from this book, as apparently they cut out Jack Graham entirely.
I listened to this on audiobook read by Scott Brick, whom I thoroughly enjoyed as a narrator of Card’s Ender series. He was no disappointment here. Included in this version was the short story “No Time Left”. It was, in a word, terrible. The second the client said his name I knew exactly where it was going, and I was exactly right. Don’t bother with it.
Also posted on BookCrossing.
Read as part of the Books Won Challenge