Reading Journal: Continued

When I concluded Tuesday's post, I divulged my disappointment with some of my mistakes. I tend toward perfectionism, so I wasn't excited about making errors, but since there was nothing I could do about it, I forged onward.

I decided I wanted an index in my journal in case I wanted to reference one of the books I read. I used the same lettering as I used for the book title and for the Steampunk graphic in this post. I wanted to lay it down in the middle of the page, but I didn't get it far enough into the crease and I fear it's going to continue to wear until it breaks down the center. Again, there's nothing I can do about it.

I'll come back to this page later. There was more work to do here, but I moved on for this evening because I didn't have all my supplies yet.

I also added four pages of what is known in the book journaling community as a "book shelfie." I bought this at an Etsy shop, too, and printed it out. I fudged around with the sizing on it to get it to fit my notebook. Each page of book shelfie holds 100 books. I estimated over 300 books in my nonfiction To Be Read (TBR) pile, and so I made four pages. I know I'm missing some paper books when I made my list, so I expect to grow to close to 400 before I'm finished.

Another disappointment is that the steampunk stickers I added on either side of the book shelfies are crooked, but again, I was forced to ignore it.

When my supplies arrived a couple days later, I returned to the index. I used pencil to rough in where I wanted to layout the index and then went over it with a pen. 

I used a Tombow marker to highlight every other line. As you can see, I had a little problem drawing a straight line. That's very disappointing, but as with the stickers, there was nothing I could do about it.

I wanted to keep track of page number, book title, and author. I decided the rating wasn't something I needed in the index.

The white space on either side of index cried out for some kind of image, and I had just received some steampunk stickers. I found two small ones and used them on either side.

From here, I'll go straight into my book review pages. I haven't started those yet, although I did rough in where I want my book covers to go. Now, I need to find the time to copy all the book covers I need to fill a full page of sticker papers. I'll probably cut them by hand rather than use my sticker maker machine.

I'm also waiting for a stamp set I ordered. It's got a stamp for book reviews and a star rating stamp. I'm sure I'll make more mistakes, but there will be nothing I can do about those either.

Still, despite all the mistakes I made, I had fun doing this and I'm ridiculously proud of what I made.

Reading Journal: The Work Has Begun

I mentioned that I was going to do a nonfiction reading journal and I've started to play around with it. I watched a lot of book journal setups and flip throughs, but they were all for fiction. I did find a few ideas that I liked, though, and adapted them for my needs.

1. Nonfiction

2. Not limited to a single year. This journal is for the entire collection

3. I didn't want games like book bingo or bracket challenges. That gave me very little front matter.

From watching the YouTube videos, I knew I wanted a square journal. This size is 8"x8" from Archer & Olive (I received no compensation in any form from this company. As my weeping credit card will attest). BTW, their paper is yummy and I'm in trouble now. I already have a small notebook problem and this is going to make it worse.

This notebook has a nautical theme, but I thought it also had a steampunk vibe to it.

This is my title page. All my graphics were either purchased on Etsy or from Cora Crea Crafts (Again, no compensation of any kind).

I bought this alphabet, put it together to form words in my graphics program, and then used my sticker cutter to cut it out. Which was an absolute ordeal! For one, it's been a long time since I made stickers. I've been buying printables with cut files already made. For two, the steampunk alphabet has a lot of little things sticking out of the letters and the cutting software wanted to cut around each and every letter.

The first pages of a hardcover notebook are normally difficult to use because of how they're made, so I did a two-page spread of decor. Top image is the left side. Bottom image is the right side.

Before I made any of the stickers, I printed all my possibilities out on regular paper, cut them out, and played around with the layout. I wanted to make sure there were no mistakes when I used my stickers.

It didn't work. I messed up. I meant to put a background graphic down on the left side as well as the right, but I forgot and stuck down the first sticker before I remembered. It was too late then to go back, so I went without it. Originally, I didn't have the tickets on the spread in the upper left-hand corner, but it looked as if it needed something, so I added it.

More mistakes on the right-hand page. I did remember to put the background down this time, but I put down the airship image before the lady on the left. Which meant some of the airship is behind her and not visible. I then compounded my problem by adding another extra image to the layout. The bag in the front center of the page. It made the layout look busy and I'm sorry I did that.

Part 2 of the saga is on Thursday

Sketch It Out

I have no artistic ability...much to my disappointment. I also hear words, but am not visual. Which means when I'm writing, I look for a lot of pictures online to use for inspiration. I'm not sure at the beginning what a character looks like, but when I find their image, I know it.

However, sometimes there is no image. That's when I pick up a pen and try to make a sketch. I know it's going to be bad, but I don't need an exact rendering. I need an estimation.

The Post-it note in the image is my attempt to sketch out the market in Trujillo, Puerto Jardin. (The Paladin League series)

Shape is wrong. Orientation was wrong and I drew over the top to realign it. I didn't put the streets in that run alongside the market, but I knew they were there.

When I had the ugly, horrible, rough sketch in the condition you see in the picture, I put it in the Paladin League Notebook (I'm on number 2) and started writing.

As terrible as I am at anything drawing/sketching related, this was what I needed to write. I'll take it.

Fonts, Fonts, Fonts

I like fonts. It's fun to play with them and I use them to create things like flyers for charity events at work, graphics for the blog, and general creative ideas. I might stink at art, but I'm good with typography.

Except I like fonts a little too much.

I have a font manager because I have too many to put on my computer. If I tried, it would bog down the entire thing. I like my font manager and it's got a lot of useful tools, including categorization. Except that I have to manually put them into the categories (at least I haven't found a way for it to do it for me) and from the beginning I had an overwhelming number of fonts. Taking the time to categorize them? Who has that kind of time?

And then I had this idea for graphics. I knew the exact font I want and I'm sure I own it. The problem? I can't find it. Even with the font manager, it takes a long time to scroll through the fonts. They're sorted alphabetically and I'm in the Bs now.

I'm debating how badly I want to find this font for this project or if I can live without it. I'm stubborn. It might take me a while longer to give up.

My Artist Quest

To my endless frustration, I was born with a desire to draw without much talent and without enough passion to work at it until my skills became tolerable. This is why I keep dabbling in art things like the painting party or signing up for online drawing classes or (my latest) scratch off art.

Facebook and their ads algorithm is continually showing me art-related ads and I keep clicking on them. Then they showed me the scratch-off art kit and it looked fun! It also looked less messy than the paint-by-numbers kits they'd been showing me so I decided to try the Eiffel Tower kit.

As you can see from the image, it's relatively easy. All I have to do is scratch off the silver lines. I've done the top of the tower so far. However, I ran into a couple of things as I worked.

Number one, the tool they provide is cheap and difficult to work with. I can buy better scratch-off tools, but I have a feeling this is going to be my one and only scratch-off project, so it's not worth the investment. Number two, this is messy. It is very, very messy because those scratchings have to go somewhere. They're fine, tiny things and they stick stubbornly to the drawing board. I found that they don't simply fall off with a couple of quick taps of them board against paper.

Once again, my desire to be an artist has been frustrated. This time it isn't lack of skill because pretty much zero skill is required. It's because it's sort of tedious and the free tool is horrible. Back to the drawing board (pun intended).

I Fail Art

One of the things I've always wanted to do is pencil sketch. Sitting down and creating a beautifully realistic piece of art with just a pencil would be amazing. I know I'll never be awesome at it, but I would like to be decent at it. Enough that I could do it for pleasure without getting frustrated.

With that in mind, I streamed a learn to draw class on Bluprint (I talked about how they hooked me in last week). I figured if I was paying for this, I might as well use it to learn something I always wanted to do. I bought about $60 worth of art supplies and started the class. Lesson one was sketch a leaf. It's a brown/red leaf that is pinned with a nail to a light surface and with enough light to cast a shadow.

The instructor walked us through blocking out the leaf before we actually sketch the leaf. Just to give us a framework to draw within.

I failed already. My framework looks nothing like the teacher's example.

Luckily, I bought a large pad of paper so I can restart, but it's so discouraging. I know, I can't expect to sit down and be as good as an artist who's been sketching for years, but still you'd think I could at least do a better job with the framework than this mess. Sigh. Back to the drawing board. Literally.

Totally an Artist

Have you guys heard about those painting studios where you show up, sip a little wine, and paint a picture on a canvas? I think it's been a few years since I first read something about them and I've wanted to try it from the start. I finally got my chance!

A few of the women I work with wanted to try it as a girls' night out and everything fell into place for Tuesday. There were six of us and we had the back row to ourselves.

It was a lot of fun! (Although the chairs were pretty uncomfortable.) I discovered I have a heavy hand with the paint brush and things didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped, but it still turned out good enough that I'll hang it up in my house somewhere. Probably in my bedroom.

If you're looking for something fun to do, especially with a group, check to see if there's somewhere around your area that hosts a painting night. It was definitely worth it.

This is my painting.

Rough Sketch

One of my great disappointments in life is that I can't draw. I'd love to pick up a sketch pad and some pencils and make beautiful drawings. Maybe if I spent time practicing I'd reach a point where I was adequate and not embarrassing, but while I'd like to draw, I don't have a burning passion for it. Not like writing.

As a kid, when I'd try to draw and fail, I'd give up and go do something else, but when I wrote something and it wasn't exactly how I wanted it, I revised and reworked, and wrote some more. This is the difference, I think, between a passion and an interest.

I've tried coloring books because it allows some color creativity if not actual drawing, but I found this exceedingly boring and gave up quickly.

Of course, this lack of talent doesn't mean I've given up and I frequently have to talk myself out of buying art supplies. Most of the time I'm pretty good about doing it because I know I'll end up with an unused collection if I don't. Recently, I failed. I bought a color pencil set, a regular pencil set, and two sketchbooks.

I had them sitting in my office, next to the computer, and while I was writing, I had this idea. Let me draw a map! I'm working on a scene toward the end of my book and there's a lot to keep straight as far as character/plot/action/etc. and the layout of the land was one more factor to monitor.

Like I said, I can't draw well, but I didn't need an artist's rendering, just a rough sketch of what is where. So I opened my pencil case and made an extremely rudimentary drawing. It might be ugly, but it helped me with what I needed it for. I'm calling it a win.

 

Favorite Childhood Valentine's Day Memory

I was scratching my head, trying to come up with a blog post idea for Valentine's Day that hadn't been done six million times before. This is what I came up with: My favorite childhood Valentine's Day memory.

One of the things I liked in grade school was that everyone needed to bring a valentine for all their classmates, that way no one was left out. We also decorated shoe boxes into which the cards would be dropped. That's my favorite memory--the box I decorated in (I think) third grade.

Everyone usually just put construction paper over the shoe box and a few hearts and called it good, but in this particular year I did more. I made my box look like Snoopy's doghouse.

It turned out super cool and I even brought a plastic Snoopy from home and put him on top of the roof. Do I need to say that I won the contest for box decoration. I'm sure I have a picture of it somewhere among the huge stash of photos my dad brought from Minnesota, but I haven't been able to find it. I hope I do one day because I'd like to see it again. I'm sure it's much more impressive in my mind than it was in real life. :-)

I love doing artistic stuff, but sadly, wasn't gifted with a lot of ability. I think that's why this memory is a favorite of mine.

Why Is Girl With a Pearl Earring a Masterpiece?

Interesting.

The Artist In Me

One of my big regrets in life is that I'm not a talented artist. I've always wanted to sit down, pick up a pencil, and draw brilliant sketches. I just haven't wanted it badly enough to put in the hours of practice that it would take to get good at it. :-/

However, I continually try to do things that are at least minimally artistic. They rarely turn out they I envision, but it makes me happy to play around with it anyway.

On Saturday, I had one of those artistic expression days.

I was putting stickers in my planner (which I will not talk about!) and I wanted some to mark family wedding anniversaries. I hopped online and did a little searching, but seriously, the price charged for stickers can get ridiculous, and when you factor in shipping... Well, I balked. I'd already bought a bunch of stickers and I didn't want to buy more.

Then I remembered I have a bunch of blank stickers in my filing cabinet. I'll make my own, I decided!

And it actually turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. I had stickers that were 2 inches by 4, so I set it up for two anniversary stickers on one label. Over the image, I put a shape with some champagne colored fill to match the flutes in the picture and printed them out. Wah-la! Anniversary stickers!

Are they as awesome as the ones people are selling online? No, but the price was right and I had fun designing them. I'm calling it a win-win.

NASA Travel Posters

NASA has created some super cool travel posters for various planets and moons in our solar system (and a few outside our solar system). They're free to print and come in both PDF and a high res TIFF format. Be warned that the TIFF takes a while to download--the one for Earth is more than 200 MB in size.

This is such a great idea! I just wish that I had more room (and the right decor) to actually put these up in my house somewhere. I'll have to settle for using them on my computer for wallpaper. There's always room in the cyber world. Anyway, I love the vintage feel the posters have! Art is subjective, and of course, there are some posters I don't really like and others I think are awesome. I'm sure you'll have your favorites, too.

My personal favorites are: The Grand Tour, Mars, and Earth and Titan is incredible, too. My only lament is there isn't a poster for Saturn. :-(

Coloring Books

I've seen a lot of articles in past few months about coloring books for adults being a hot item right now and that coloring is so relaxing. I thought about it and I went, yeah, you know that would be kind of cool. Relaxing and probably it would inspire creativity. When I do a lot of scrapbooking, it always helps my writing and I have theorized that it's because creativity is flowing, but in a way that doesn't drain the writing muscles in my brain.

Daydreams of how relaxed and productive I'd be danced in my brain. I ordered one of the really highly rated coloring books and a pack of art pencils.

Finally, with both in my hands, I sat down at the table and began to color.

Relaxation didn't come. Almost all I could think about was how much other stuff I had to do and I couldn't believe I was wasting time coloring. I stressed about which color I should use to color in the flowers. I became frustrated when my plan to color every other petal an aqua color failed when I had the wrong number of petals and I ended up with two aquas next to each other.

The pencils frustrated me, too. I was expecting a deep, rich color, but instead I had to press hard to get nothing more than a light tint to the petals. Maybe I should have bought different pencils, I worried as I colored. But I'm not an artist and I had no clue which kind of pencils I should have bought. Do I need to research this? But art pencils are ridiculously expensive already, do I really want to buy another set that I might not like either?

Um, you know, that cabinet should be straightened out. I wonder where I could put-- No, focus on the coloring, it's relaxing. Breathe in and out and color.

I wonder if I should hang my wind spinner outside? Does the home owner's association allow wind spinners in the front of the house? I have that hook right there on the front porch. Do I have a hook on my back patio?

Color. Focus. Relax.

Now I have the wrong number of petals to do every other petal purple. Why did the color book artist do this? I can't be the only one who wants to color every other petal a different hue.

Why am I coloring when I have half a dozen other, more important things to be doing?

If you're getting the idea that this was a relaxation failure for me, you'd be right. It also didn't inspire creativity. I'm not ready to give it up yet, but maybe I'll try it with music next time or while I'm watching baseball or something.

Coloring For Adults

A couple of weeks ago, I shared an article on Facebook about an artist who created some coloring books for adults. This sounded like such a cool idea and it immediately intrigued me. I've always wished I had the ability to draw, but unfortunately my work isn't good enough for me and I get discouraged.

Maybe it's because as much as I love it, art isn't my passion. Maybe if I was willing to put in the time it takes to refine my skill, I might be decent enough to enjoy doing it. But the truth of the matter is that I'm not willing to put in the hours it would take. With writing, I did. When I created something that didn't meet my level of expectation, I would revise it or keep writing until I became better at it, until I reached a level where I could do it professionally. With art, I just rip the page out of the sketchbook, throw it in the recycle bag, and go do something else.

So anyway, here's an artist who did the hard part for me, all I'd have to do is color between her lines. Then I'd think about it some more and wonder when I'd have time to do this. I'm stretched so thin right now, I'm exhausted most of the time, and if I need a creative outlet that is not writing, I have a ton of scrapbook supplies that I should do something with.

Despite this, I keep revisiting the page with the coloring books and thinking about clicking the buy button. We'll see what happens. :-)

Art Comes to Life

I've always wanted to draw like this, but I'd never have the patience to do it. Watch how many different pens, pencils, markers and paints this guy uses to create a very realistic package. It's awesome!

What Art Can Do

Years ago, I bought a print for my parents' house that showed Don Quixote on horseback holding a spear and carrying a shield. With him is Sancho Panza. It's done in abstract and the original work was done by Pablo Picasso. You can see the print at All Posters if you're interested.

It's done in black and white, there's no color involved, but something about it grabbed me.

The funny thing is that while I've always liked the print, I didn't realize it was Don Quixote for a really, really long time. Call me slow, I know. It wasn't until I saw The Man From La Mancha while I was in New York for a Romance Writers of America conference in 2003 that I realized just who and what the print represented.

Suddenly, the print took on new meaning for me. Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, dreaming the Impossible Dream. No longer was it just an interesting drawing, now it had a story.

Maybe it's because I'm a writer. Maybe it's because I'm a dreamer. ::shrug:: But the story in The Man From La Mancha spoke to me.

When I moved, I asked my parents if I could take that print with me. I knew exactly where I wanted to put it in my new home. They let me and it's up right outside my bedroom. Sometimes I don't see it at all because of how familiar it is, but on other days, I walk past it and it speaks to me.

On different days it gives me different messages. Sometimes I remember the trip to New York and to Broadway to see the play. Sometimes I remember the conference and signing copies of Ravyn's Flight (now available in ebook!), the first time I ever autographed books. Sometimes I think about Don Quixote, living in his own world and making others strive to be better than they were. Like Aldonza (AKA Dulcinea). Sometimes I think of other aspects of the story.

The bottom line, though, is that this one piece of art can say so many things. Some of the associations are of my own making, but some come courtesy of Picasso and Miguel de Cervantes and that's pretty darn cool.

Adding Touches To My Home

In my Minnesota house, I didn't have a lot of wall space to hang pictures, but my new home in Georgia have space I need to fill. This is something I'm going to do a few pieces at a time because of the cost.

My first two paintings arrived last week. (Should I call them prints since they're not originals?) One of them isn't up yet and won't be until I get the handyman out to do it. I want it perfectly centered in the area over the fireplace (it's a square made by molding) and I don't think I can manage that. :-) Besides, the picture is 32 inches square and that's difficult to handle.

But the second piece of art was going in a place where I was able to hang it myself and that's what I did on Saturday.

The picture is level, it's the camera that's a bit angled. Also, my green walls don't photograph well, but in person are a rich, vibrant olive green. If they really were the shade in the photo, I would have had my kitchen painted. :-) I put it up between a door to the patio and a window in the eat-in part of my kitchen.

Apologies for the sun glare on the glass. The print is an abstract done by Alma Lee, an artist from Wisconsin. (FYI, I bought the print. I'm not getting compensated even indirectly.)

The other print, the one for over the fireplace, is also abstract with lots of bright colors. It's done by a different artist, and I'll share once I finally get that put up.

The Night Watch

This is totally awesome!

And if you're as interested as I am, here's the Making Of video. You'll have to click the CC button on the bottom and select subtitles in English.

Artist At Work

I wish I could do this.

Pin Art

I'd never have the patience to do this once let alone do it over and over to get this good at it. It amazes me sometimes what people can do with common things and make art out of them.