The first of the missing pages...

Back to page 35, one of the missing pages on the black Fabriano Artistico. It's supposed to be a portrait of Roscoe Holcomb, but it doesn't look like him.

Still, I like the illustration. It's done with NeoColor IIs. I just like layering the colors up. It's coated with Krylon's Crystal Clear, in a probably vain attempt to keep it from leaving color on the opposite page.

I've got to admit it's getting better...

Thank you for all who've inquired about my back. It's much better, thanks to the OTC drug, Backaid, placed - oh so conveniently for those suffering from back pain, on the bottom shelf at the HEB... I told you I'd post a pick of the book covered with the goldfish paper, and then forgot, so here it is...

It's a flat spine book - like a kid's book - which you can't fold completely backwards, but is still quite a nice style for a journal. Because it's not 'shouldered' the pages all open flat-flat.

Here's the page I did yesterday after I posted... More music and color!

In the first 'M' of YUMM!! There's a spot of gold. It's Maimeri Gouache, which I love. (It's also coloring the OH, YEAH and BTW.) I carry three tubes of it (the deep and light golds and the silver) in my little tool caddy with me almost all of the time. My friend, Nena, gave me the little caddy thing. Well, actually, she gave me three, and I have the others loaded up with other art tools...

I cram a LOT of stuff into the little thing...

You can see a Niji water pen, some Pigma Graphics, a passel of Zig Calligraphy markers, four Pentel ColorBrushes, three Prismacolor Premier Markers, a couple pencils, a Sheaffer calligraphy pen (with a shadow nib in it), a bone folder and a partridge in a pear tree.

¡April Fool's!

There are four pages missing in this post. In the middle of a couple of signatures, I sew in a sheet of black Fabriano Artistico, because I love doing colored crayons (the NeoColor II's although Roz is making me want to try the Stabilo Woodies) on black, or, really any darkish colored paper. But I never do these in sequence, because my journal is a pretty fast thing, and that kind of illo takes me awhile. So we left off listening to Rafe Stefanini channel Roscoe Holcomb...

I got this paper to use in my bookbinding class at AMOA. Usually I post the page with the foldover as a detail, but I love the colors on this spread, so I posted it this way! There's enough paper on a sheet of this to bind a smallish book - say 6 1/2" x 9 1/2" - using one side for the cover and the other for the endsheets. I did do a little book in the class with this (but not doing the endsheets with it), and I'll post a pic of that at the end of this...

page 34

I'm not showing 34 & 39 next to each other because that's not how they appear in the journal... One of the most fabulous things about living in ATX is the music. Bands play for free that are just wonderful. Sometimes the guys are sidemen for more famous guys, sometimes they were sidemen for famous guys, whatever... But they can all play the holy shit out of stuff. Caspar Rawls is one of those guys, Ernie Poole Ball, who played with Johnny Cash, is another.

My back has gone out three and a half times in the last year, and it's a PITA.  But that doesn't stop me from journaling!

 

I'm about to go out to the blugrass brunch at Opal Divine's. Maybe I'll do some more journaling there. 

I'd say it's pretty likely...

All caught up!

Yikes! We'll be all caught up by the end of this post, unless I wake up in the middle of the night and write something, which seems bloody unlikely...

Note the decorative paper - it's actually two strips, pasted side by side, of a paper I covered a little book with earlier this week... I'll post some pics of it at the end - that is actually a wrapping paper, I think. Not a traditional 'decorative paper' by any means, but really pretty.

Page 29 was written at a club in the dark, just in case you're wondering about the sloppiness. I have to do that frequently, write and draw in the dark. It's kinda fun, actually, like when you play Cranium and have to draw things with your eyes closed! My family plays Cranium when we go to the beach. I'm pretty good at drawing things with my eyes closed. My family is even pretty good at guessing what they are! It's the Humdingers that are our downfall with that game. We never know any of the songs, so we all submit songs that we do know and might possibly be able to hum to chose from instead.

This is one of my favorite recent pages. It's got drawings. Heck, it's got drawings that are talking! And it has another of my favorite things for journals: an autograph. Admittedly, it's an illegible autograph, so I had to write the guy's name over it so we'd all know who it was. I spelled his name wrong - it's Rafe Stefanini - so I'll have to write about THAT in my journaling tomorrow!

Oh yeah, the little bookie wookie pictures I promised!

It's got another one of those beaded headbands, and the white leather is actually vellum.

Yet again...

Here are the next batch....

Now you might just wonder why someone would 'celebrate' their 25th anniversary with someone they are no longer married to. And you might wonder why someone lets their ex sleep in their guest bedroom.  (He likes to say it's on the couch, but, really, he has his own room.) I'm wonder myself at times. Of course, when you marry someone, you marry their whole family, and the short answer is that I'm still married to the family. (The shorter answer is that I'm nuts.)

 

And finally, because, frankly these pages have been a bit boring, one with some art on it...

 

...which takes us up to the beginning of this week. I should note that the color in the illustrations is from Prismacolors. I neglected to mention these in the list of art supplies yesterday, but I use them a lot. They're what I color the center of the shadow nib lettering with, among other things.

 

More pages...

Here's the next batch of images from the current journal, Four of a Kind. I've had some queries about what media I'm using. I write normally with a Lamy fountain pen, (they come in other colors, too). I fill the cartridges with Noodler's Black ink, thanks to my friend, Roz, for recommending that! I am a total sucker for fountain pens, but I have to use one that can take waterproof ink. I've found that broader nibs are less likely to clog, so I use at least a medium nib. Other than that, I use Peerless Watercolors (thank you, Ricë, for sending me some), Neocolor II crayons by Caran d'Ache, and occasionally wax crayons of various sorts... Plus all kinds of markers, (Zig Memory Calligraphy Markers and Pentel Colorbrush markers) and other stuff on and off.

Ahh, here's a page with some photos printed out - onto a commercial printing paper: Fortuna Matte 80# text. One shows me doing page 7, and the other the progress of the sunset, which continues on...

...page 11. It's kind of hard to see, but on the upper right of page image you can barely see some white tabs. They're what are holding in the business cards... This is how I keep track of people and stuff. It's not a great way, really, because I have to remember when I met the people, but that just sends me down memory lane looking through old journals. On the St Patrick's pages, you can see the Neocolors being used to add the color to the margin area. I love these kinds of color schmears... Even if you can't draw, you can play with color...







 

 More Neocolor stuff here, like the illustration of my foot in the sandal, and just above it, the tab for holding the business card...

The Neocolors do smear, as you can see on page 12. You can fix them with Crystal Clear from Krylon, but probably some other less toxic pastel fixatives would work as well. I like the Crystal Clear 'cos it makes stuff shiny and that makes the colors 'pop' out, but it's stinky and gives some people a tremendous headache!

Four of a Kind... Pages

I thot I'd try posting pages from my journal for awhile, since some people seem to find them interesting. They may find it less interesting if I post more, because, frankly I tend to publish only the pages that seem interesting, and now you'll get all the pages and they may seem boring. But, hey, I can stop anytime. So here goes!

I've just started a new journal, as you know. Here are the first few pages...

 

So, there you go... Three and a half images. I scanned them at slightly different resolutions. Some people like to just get the general look of things, others want to read the journal closely. 

I'll figure it out!