Little Books!

Recently, I took an introductory bookbinding class. It was offered at this cool studio in the D.C. area (Pyramid Atlantic Art Center) and I just took the plunge and signed up. The drive down is normal rush-hour miserable, but the drive back takes only about an hour and fifteen minutes, so as a whole I didn't think it was too far. I had great fun, and learned some simple bindings. I signed up for the next class -- Intermediate Bookbinding -- where I will learn some multiple signature hard cover binding. I can't wait.

The first example here is a small accordion-bound book. I covered the hard board with decorative paper and then glued in the accordion-folded in pages.


These are Japanese stab-bound notebooks. It's a simple method that can be used to make simple books like these or can be used with much more complex sewing and embellished surfaces for a pretty fancy book.

My favorite was the pamphlet binding. These are little notebooks/sketchbooks that consist of one signature (group of nested pages) sewn through the middle. I made the two with red and robots during the class and the two chicken ones at home (using a chicken I originally used for a block print and a tiny heart stamper). Most of these use a folded cover to make the edges stronger. For the second one I made at home, I didn't fold the cover edges and instead I used a corner-rounder from Janelle's stash of scrapbook tools to make those nice neat corners. This one also has a thicker drawing paper in it rather than just regular printer bond.



Lots of fun!

Scooter

Just a quick sketch of a scooter, based on a photo of a vintage Vespa. I am working on a small project that I will reveal more of later, but one of the things I need is a picture of a scooter towing a small blimp down the highway.

Chicken

Just a chicken. I needed to install drivers for an old Wacom tablet and then had to make sure it worked!

Owls

I didn't realize that it has been nearly 3 months since I have posted until I went to make this post. That's too long. Sorry for that, my loyal readers! I have been working on stuff. Most recently, I have been working on a series of three square drawings of owls as a gift for J. Each is foot square, drawn in ink and then watercolored.

An example of just the ink drawing (this is a cropped scan):


And one that is watercolored (again, the scanner is a little small to catch the whole thing, and I was too lazy to make multiple scans and stitch them, so it isn't a full view of what it looks like):

More Mixer

I have been playing more with the mixer brusher. Painter is still better, but this is where Photoshop is better -- this image is only 95kb in size. Tiny.

ps -- I know the woman looks like she is a fresh zombie with green skin.

Photoshop Mixer Brush

I played a bit with the new brush tools in Photoshop CS5 today. The mixer brush tool picks up color from the area you are "painting" in, and sorts of mixes and spreads it about with the color you have your brush set to. It is a pale imitation of the color mixing and brush capabilities of Painter, so I can't imagine myself using this in Photoshop. But if I didn't have Painter, I can see how the careful use of the mixer brush could add a new dimension to coloring in Photoshop. These are two different versions of the same thing -- a painted-over version of a photo. The light one is the original painted version and the dark one is tweaked for color. As always, click on the image to see a bigger one.

Lines

I drew these a few days ago. I actually drew about two dozen different ones, these are just my favorites. I scanned them this evening and colored them in photoshop. I rearranged in the studio a little this weekend, so that the scanner is now set up, connected, and powered-- so scanning is quick now!

Block Prints

I've been working on some block prints (linoleum). So far, two different versions of an owl. These will just be in editions of 10. The photo below I staged -- the stuff wasn't really this close together as I was experimenting with some proofs.

Arrival of a Steamboat at Dawson

Very quick photoshop sketch based on a photo in the University of Washington's collection of Eric Hegg photos from 1897-1901. Part of his series of photos taken during the Klondike gold rush in the late 1890's.

Three things

1. Owen made a comic book of his own -- Robot and Camel 2: Robot and Camel Meet Stickman. With the exception of the drawing of the robot and camel on the title page, Owen did everything else himself. It's very cool! You'll need to print it to read it, probably, since the pdf file is sideways.

2. The watercolor/ink drawing that I posted about earlier did get selected for the Adams county Art council annual show. Even just a few years ago this didn't mean all that much to me, but each year it gets slightly more selective. This year, there were 257 submissions by 95 artists. Only 50 items were selected for the show (which now takes place as part of the Gettysburg Festival and is hung in the gallery on campus), so I feel like that means something. I am getting it decently framed so it'll look professional. Feel free to come visit between June 18 and 27 and take a look!

3. Only three days left before the Klondike Bertha deadline! Even though there is not actually any chance the project will really hit its goal, all of you who pledged will still get a secret suprise of some sort.

Notebooks

I am a notebook junkie. I love notebooks and sketchbooks. This is a small selection of what I own -- it doesn't include work notebooks, notebooks in other places in the house, or notebooks on the other shelf. Or really old notebooks. Many of the notebooks are mostly empty, because I htink I like the object more than actually using one. I found a blog today all about notebooks (it's called Notebook Stories). I love it. Makes me want to go buy some new notebooks!

Duck

I want an iphone or ipod touch just so I can have the Brushes app and can make stuff like this all the time. But meanwhile my copy of Painter on my computer works well for quick little pictures.

Graphic Design

While I don't have any real interest in being a graphic designer, I do occasional dabble in it. I have two recent attempts at creating a graphic identity of sorts for creative folks that I know.

First, many months ago I started working with my sister for a logo for her studio/gallery/art education space. She had a name she'd been using, but now she was renting a space and planning on moving forward. So with the name "Bird's Nest Studio" and not much else, I started working out some logo ideas for her. I think she was happy with the outcome. I adore her studio.

Here's the logo up close and personal:

Next, I worked on a logo for Janelle to use for a sock pattern she was developing with the intention to enter into a contest and make available via Ravelry. This one was much harder -- there are so many knitters, pattern designers, fiber stores etc. with knitting/yarn-related logos that it was impossible to come up with anything original. in the end, I just embraced unoriginality and went with some balls of yarn. I at least drew them myself. But the final pattern looked good, so I was happy enough with it. What you see below is badly pixelated (this is why I am not a graphic designer -- too much fiddly stuff to make stuff look right for the web) but the version that is used for the pattern is not.

Anybody else need a logo?

Klondike Bertha, or the Tale of a Girl Mining the Great Yukon River

Ok folks, I am trying something very different. Go take a look.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1134260580/klondike-bertha

Doodle in color

This is the same as the last thing I posted, only after I colored it. It's almost impossible to tell that it wasn't done digitally when you look at a small version of it, but when blow up you can see it was watercolor and ink. I used 6 colors, mainly because I figured that was enough for balance, and my watercolor palette only has six wells.


Here's a close up of one corner (it's pretty close to actual size):

Big Doodle

This is a 1.5" by 2" segment of a much larger piece. The full one is about 11" by 17" and consists of many hundreds of small, icon-like objects. I originally planned to leave it black and white, but I have decided to add color. In the meantime, I scanned it so I could use photoshop to explore some color options.

Doodling

I went to a conference last week, and it must have been pretty good since this is about all the doodles I have to show for my 3 days there.

Moon People

Happy Valentine's Day!

This Valentine is for all my readers:



This is a scan of the one I made for J:

Watercolors are fun

I have been making watercolor versions of some birds I drew last year, as well as some new birds. I really like the vibrance of watercolor, and I am slowly getting better at using it. Once I have laid down teh color, I go back in with a technical pen and some india ink to do the outlines and details. I am not getting much better at scanning -- these are kind of washed out and not as bright and vivid as the real ones. But you get the idea.

A small ostrich, about 5 inches tall:


This one is actually about 16 inches wide, but it's hard to show that here:


This condor is about 12" tall:

Doodles

Just some doodles. Scanned in, colored in photoshop.

Dancing by the River in the Pale Sunrise

More monsters

I added three more monsters to my flickr site. You get to see only one here. This FORCES you to go to my flickr site if you want to see more!

Paper cut

I have been working on some small monsters. I said I'd contribute a couple of small monster paintings to an event I attend every year, but the acrylic paintings were so lame I couldn't stand it. So I tried doing some in watercolor, and while they were better, they still weren't what I had in mind. So then I tried cut paper, and these I like. I have sketches for 14 monsters, so I am just going to plow through them all. I am not sure how to prepare the few that I am donating. I could mount them on small canvases (the thick-edged kind), and paint the edges. I could go ahead and mat/frame them. I could mount them on masonite or wood. Not sure yet.

Fish

Just a fish.

Boy

Not to toot my own horn too much, but I really like how this turned out. It was based on a photo, but not converted or anything -- I drew out the shapes. I am thinking about making another version of this one, but with actual cut-out paper.

Baby Monsters

One of my lovely commenters mentioned the idea of baby monsters on polo shirts.

http://www.cafepress.com/skbirch

Doodles

Last week I spent a day at a workshop on converting to an open-source learning management system. Much fun was had by all. I actually do a much better job of paying attention if I can doodle while I listen to people to talk. So two pages of doodles is most of what i have to show for my day.

I have hardly been posting...

...lately. I spent my spare time in November writing a novel (middle-grade children's adventure story). A bad, horrid, repetitive, poorly written, confusing thing, but it's 50,000 words and I've never accomplished that before. I'll try again in a few months, this time looking a little more at quality than quantity.

Meanwhile, I have some artwork to finish for Christmas presents. I carved a new block for a small chicken print today over my lunch hour (or so), and tonight will do a run of prints. You may recall the original little chicken from a previous post. I'll post the new chickens once I am done.

Car

This was just a little thing I made in Photoshop by playing around with textured backgrounds and some old car images I scanned from Life magazine ads.