PDF zine: Summer Journaling

Written by AnnaDenise on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 12:00

Hiya! Just wanted to let you know that I'm selling the Summer Journalling PDF zine that I've been using for my workshops this summer. Buy it here (if you want).

Art Journalling 101 Zine for Sale

Written by AnnaDenise on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 22:36

Good news folks!

I picked up the zine from the copy shop today (and they did all the stapling and folding which is AWESOME, because I oh so hate folding things - laundry, paper, money). I put it up in my Etsy Shop (which is back online and I'll be filling with fun new stuff soon) and you can get it for $3,50.



I created this zine for the students in my Art Journalling 101 course and Etsy Labs course to keep as a souvenir and to help remember them some of the things we did during the course. It's partly an illustrated version of my Art Journalling 101 tutorials and some extra exercises you can try out on your own.

It's 12 pages, printed in black and white, and stapled in the middle.




Please do let me know what you think about the zine should you actually get it. It's my first one and if you guys like it, I'll do some more (now that I finally found my little folding slaves). :-)

Have a great week!
Love, Anna Denise

Report: Etsy Labs Art Journalling!

Written by AnnaDenise on Thursday, June 02, 2011 at 12:20

I know this post is way overdue. I've written it in my head about five times and all five times I wrote these brilliant pieces of literature. Of course, the sad thing about my head is that nothing will actually stay put inside of it, so you'll have to do with the usual random bs.



Last week, on Tuesday the 24th of May, I had the honor and pleasure to teach an art journalling course with the amazing Julie Anne from Turtlewings for Etsy Labs. Yes, the real Etsy, represented by Marta Pakovska (the Dutch community manager).

I hardly slept from excitement the night before, but Jules and I got our groove on reorganizing Turtlewings to host 25 guests, and by the time people were coming in for the course - we were ready!




We started the evening with some drinks and an Etsy goodie bag, containing (among other things) my first ever zine with drawn instructions for the evening's exercises as well as a summary of my 'Art Journalling 101' posts and 'How to draw a simple puppet' instructions!




The place was packed and the first exercise we decided to give our students for the night was to create a wrap around cover. First, I asked them to do a watercolor background, keeping in mind the colors that resonate with them.

While we were letting the backgrounds dry, we started on the second exercise, which consisted of creating a self-portrait out of collaged paper and scraps. I invited people to let go of the classical notion of what a self-portrait should be and we therefore didn't provide any mirrors. Instead, we thought in terms of shape and color, in terms of landscapes and abstractions of the body. Sounds complicated perhaps, but in practice it means you just go all out :-) I was delighted to see how very different people reacted to this exercises and how wonderful the results.



After this 'warming-up' we took our pencils and fineliners out and I asked people to doodle on their wraparound cover. By creating swirls and circles, we loosened up our hands and minds and we were ready for the final and most complicated exercise: I asked people to journal about their day, using some of the techniques they could find in the zine. I was very surprised to see that everyone just went for it, despite how much or little experience they had with drawing.



All in all it was an amazing evening and I hope (and think) everyone had a good time and that I've inspired some people to start an art journal. I'm a little late with this post, but I want to thank every single one of you who came out to our Etsy Labs evening! Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and great attitude! And thank you Julie Anne and Marta for making this evening happen!!!



Some reviews of the evening:
* 'Etsy lab at Turtlewings, Brussels' by Lizzi on Life with Lizzi
* 'Etsy Lab in Brussels' by Nathalie on des couleurs, du piment et quatre    bras
* 'Etsy Lab in Brussels' by Kathy on el dibujo del gato
* 'Art Journal #1' by Tuf on Tufsstuff
* 'Art Journalling' on '...and handmade too!'


Pictures courtesy of Marta from Etsy and Lizzi from Life with Lizzi! Thank you girls!

How to draw a simple puppet?

Written by AnnaDenise on Monday, December 27, 2010 at 16:25

Hello my darlings!

I hope you had a nice Christmas and are now enjoying some well-deserved time off as I am! I figured it was time for another quick tutorial, and because some people emailed me about drawing puppets, I figured I'd do one on that!

As you probably know, I wasn't trained as an artist. Never went to art school and missed all of those fun classes on figure drawing and human proportions and such (which is good, I think, I have no patience for art classes, to be honest). I went over them in art history, of course and remember some of the basics, but mostly I like to do my own thing. My own thing being very far from realistic. And since I'm lazy, I like shortcuts and easy tricks, some of which I will share with you today!

Here we go!

I start out in pencil, drawing two oblong shapes almost stacked on top of each other. The top one is going to be the head, the bottom one the torso. Now, fortunately my torso doesn't (yet) look like this irl, but you know. It looks kind of cute.


Then, I add very simple arm shapes. To determine how long the arms are supposed to be, I often check the mirror asking myself where does my hand go? where does the elbow bend?. It doesn't have to be perfect, but asking these kinds of questions and checking myself out in the mirror (uh-huh, hi handsome!) has helped me develop somewhat of an intuition for these things. For the legs, I start at the outer edges of the oval shape, down to the knees.


For the hands and feet, I first make two very rough outlines. A mitten shaped kind of hand will do for now.


Then, when you're done with the rough outlines of your body - you can dress it! This is always the most fun part, I think. Today, I'm wearing a short cardigan over a long shirt, bootcut jeans and sandals. My clothes aren't form fitting, so I don't follow the outlines of the body completely.


Now we're going to fix that hand. If you drew a mitten shape before, you already have the thumb. Now all you need to do is fill in four fingers into the mitten part. As if you're looking 'into' the mitten. I actually stole this trick from a documentary about Disney, so it's a legit technique, i think.

See, so pretty.


Now, to determine where your eyes are supposed to go on your head, draw an even cross over the skull shape. Make sure it isn't completely flat. Your face isn't flat either, so the lines are going to be bent a little. If you want your puppet to look to either side, move the vertical line into the direction you want the puppet to be facing. I don't draw noses on my puppets, but the vertical line is where the nose would be. My puppet is looking slightly to the left.


The egg-shaped eyes are centered on the horizontal line (yes, your eyes really are halfway on your skull). If you're drawing the face from the front, keep an even distance from the vertical line. I think officially the distance between the two eyes is supposed to be as big as one eye. So that could be a nice trick to determine how far the eyes should be apart. Now, place the mouth (in this case a simple line) halfway on the bottom part of the vertical line. Then. the ears start at the bottom of the horizontal line and go to about the spot where your mouth is (if you're using a help line for this, make sure it's bent as well).


Draw in the iris of the eye. For a relaxed look, I like to place the irises to the top of the eye, partly covered by the (imaginary) eyelid. Make sure the irises are the same size and placed at the same spot within the eye. If you don't do this, your puppet is going to look kind of crazy. Also, make sure we can never see the entire iris - you puppet will look like it's on crack.


Hair time! You can use the top half of the head for bangs, or strands of hair. Make sure the top edge of your hair is removed a little from the skull to avoid 'gollum-hair'. If you want big hair, make the space bigger.


Alright! Now it's time to finish the outlines with fineliner. I used a Faber-Castell sepia toned fine-liner in this case, but as long as it's waterproof, you should be fine.


Always by inking in the parts that go in front of other parts. It sounds kind of stupid, but I've made so many mistakes with this, it's now something I automatically do.


Ink in all the outlines. Take your time for this and make sure you ink in only the lines you want visible in the end.

For the eyes, you might have noticed I never really 'do' colored irises. I don't know why. I color in the entire iris, with one exception. I leave two little highlights out. It makes the eyes look more lively, I think. You can place them in any corner of the iris - just make sure you've got them in the same place in both eyes. Also, placing them in the bottom parts of the eye, makes the eyes look upwards.


And you're done! Easy, right?
You can now color in your puppet, or experiment with more complicated postures and positions. Just practice and you notice it'll get easier!

Pleas let me know if you've got any questions! Have a great day!
Love, Anna Denise

Art Journal Course + Free PDF

Written by AnnaDenise on Monday, November 29, 2010 at 21:21

I know it's getting a little quiet here, but it's not just because I'm spending a lot of time over there. I'm working on a few new step-by-step art journal tutorials (they will be free of course), based on some of the questions that came up during the 'Do It Together' art journal course I taught every Saturday at Turtlewings this November.

I had so much fun teaching this small course. Actually, I didn't feel like a teacher at all. Guiding our small group through our art journalling exercises just confirmed to me how much creativity is inside each and every one of us. It was great to see the parents and children interact during this course. I think the main thing that I've learned during this course is that how little 'teaching' kids and adults really need. I had definitely expected I would have to 'interfere' more than I did. In fact, I would just explain a little bit about my techniques and some of the tricks I use, explain the exercise and, well, they were off creating the most beautiful journals!

As an extra, I turned the art journal 101 tutorial from the blog into a PDF and now that the course is over, I'd like to share the PDF with you. It's exactly the same as the blog posts, just neatly bundled into a PDF. [You can view and download it here]

Also, because I love you, you can download a list of prompts here.

Enjoy!!!

---
Psst! You're all still invited to the opening of my exhibition at Turtlewings on December 7th, 19:30 pm. More info [here].

Art Journal 101 - Part 3: Drawing and putting it together

Written by AnnaDenise on Monday, May 10, 2010 at 22:33

In the final part of this tutorial, I would like to talk to you about drawing and about how to put this together with all the things I’ve talked about in the previous two parts (topic, layout, colors, and materials).

I know for most of you the drawing part is the hard part. I think this is why most art journal courses you can take online focus mostly on collage, mixed media, and scrapbooking techniques (The girls over at Red Velvet Art have a pretty awesome art journal course going on right now). Now, I like that, don’t get me wrong. Like any crafty girl I love beautifully patterned papers and ribbons, but there’s something about drawing, actually illustrating my day that really works for me. I think it’s because I am a highly visual person, it feels more natural for me to draw it myself.

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Art Journal 101 - Part 2: Color Schemes and Materials

Written by AnnaDenise on Monday, May 03, 2010 at 16:20

In this second part of my mini-series on what I've learned in these past years of keeping an art journal (or illustrated journal, as I like to call it), I'll focus on what I've learned about colors and materials to use.

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Art Journal 101 - Part 1: Topics and Layouts

Written by AnnaDenise on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 16:30

Ever since I started my first journal in 2007, art journaling has been my great passion. I know that might sound silly, because art journaling is mainly about re-creating memories based on life while it’s happening. So basically, I love reflecting on life and on my days. This has always been a big part of my life (judging by the large box of journals I have), but being a highly visual person, I find that in bringing images and text together, I can get a lot closer to my true experience.

Since I am so passionate about art journaling, I often talk about my journals and about the joy they bring me. I try to really make other people see how much fun this is and how easy staring an art journal can be. Since not a small part of the fun is the Internet community around it (you!), I would like to share with you some of the things I’ve learned in the past few years about the principles of art journaling. I’ve never been to art school, so I’ve pretty much had to figure all of this out by myself, as I am assuming most of you have as well. In the coming weeks, I’ll show you what I’ve done and what I’ve learned in three parts:
Part 1 – Topics and layouts
Part 2 – Color schemes and materials
Part 3 – Drawing and putting it together

This week, for part one, I’d like to focus on the topic of the ‘spread’ (two facing pages of your journal) and layout.

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