Adding a Pocket to an Art Journal

Building a journal is fun, but no journal is complete for me without a pocket in the back to hold ephemera I want to use, but haven’t developed a page for yet.

I’ve fallen in love with library pockets–original ones preferred–to add storage capacity to my journals. They can be glued in where needed. I also like to join them in a variety of ways, and use them as accordion books on their own.

Here’s a good short video I found on adding a gusseted pocket to the back of a handmade or purchased journal. I have just one warning–never glue on your cutting mat. The tiniest smear of glue on the mat will create a bump that will wreck your next project. Glue on a magazine, flipping the page with each new glue step.

Video courtesy:  “makezine.com: Maker’s Notebook“, posted with vodpod

—Quinn McDonal is an art journaler and creativity coach who is working on a book on confronting the inner critic.

Videos, The Stumbling Block

Everyone is doing videos. Studio videos, tutorials, teaching videos. That’s a good thing. Showing how something works in actual motion is a great help to creativity.

So why don’t I love videos? I’ve been trying to figure it out for years. I have learned the basics, although David Lynch doesn’t have much to fear. Using photographs, using movement, I’ve worked on a few videos. I even admit to liking this one.

So what’s not to like? Unlike a book, I can’t stick a bookmark on a page. I can’t use a sticky note and write “use this glue on photograph collage” and stick in in place on the video. Yes, of course I can open a spread sheet, and keep track of the times in instructional videos that I want to re-watch. That, however, is exhausting me just thinking about it.

I also can’t prop a video open on my desk and follow along, getting my hands messy and then stop it till I catch up.

Yes, of course, a book is not a video. They have different advantages and disadvantages. And yes, I have to make some videos or I’ll be relegated to the dustbin of creativity.

Sometimes when I watch videos or art demos, and the artist spends many minutes at the beginning speaking about her background, her life, her inspiration before she gets around to the doing, I get impatient. In a book, I could flip ahead. Trickier in a video, in which you can skip ahead but not really see what you missed. There is no skimming in a video.

I couldn’t wait to get a Kindle, and it didn’t stop my love of real books. I appreciated the different purposes. But I’m still waiting to warm up to videos, and I know I must.

—Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who wishes she could love videos more.

Art Tutorial: Found Poetry Collage

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If you like found poetry, you can take it one step further and create a collage with it. A few days ago, I used raw-art techniques for found poetry. Today, I’m using a different method. It’s the journaling version of … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Easy Travel Journal

The journals I like to make best are ones that are multi-purpose and not too big. That way, I can use them in creative ways, fill them up quickly, and make another one. Like most people who make things, I … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Speaking to Your Co-Workers

Public speaking is usually thought of as delivering a speech to a large group of people. But public speaking is also having a business conversation with your supervisor, persuading your spouse to go to the movie you want to see, … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Mixed Media Ideaglyph

Many people are scared to draw, so they never do.

I find that sad. I’ve invented a new kind of class to help overcome the lack of drawing ability. I promise you will never have to draw if you don’t want to. You will make marks, however, and discover symbols that are personal and meaningful for you. There are many ways to do this. Today we are going to discover a way of seeing ideaglyphs using photography, colored pencils, and a good quality paper.

“Ideaglyph” is a word I made up. A ‘glyph’ is a meaningful symbol or mark. Here in Arizona, we see ancient symbols carved into canyons and stones by the peoples of the First Nation. They are called petroglyphs. I thought that each person needs to have private and personal symbols for their own ideas, thoughts, feelings. You can share them, you can keep them private. I call them ideaglyphs.

Here is how to start: look around you. Find a pattern, a texture, a color splash that appeals to you. I’ve taken pictures of hard-water stains on sidewalks (that’s it, below), tree bark, clouds–that all have something in common. And that is that I see something in them. Maybe a figure, maybe an idea, but I see it. The photographs are simple, not color altered or changed in any way.

Ideaglyph--tree

Here’s an example: I was in a coffee house the other day. The walls had been painted many times-sponged, splashed, glazed. One of the marks was a red splash of paint. It was right above the chair rail. But to me, that splash of paint made an image. I took a picture and printed it out.

Ideaglyph: wall, before

That red splash looked like an animal to me. It’s important to note that I didn’t see a bear or a cat, just an animal. A figure. Using colored pencils, I darkened some areas and lightened others. I didn’t draw a new picture on it. I used only the color already in the picture, just deepened them or lightened them.

ideaglyph: wall, after

And right in front of me, the animal appeared in the forest. What difference does this make? I didn’t draw anything, I just applied color. It is mark making in its simplest form. But it is my mark, and it is meaningful to me. And now you can do this, too, without knowing how to draw at all. If I gave you the same print out, you could see something different. That’s OK, too.

Have fun exploring your own private symbols, create an ideaglyph of your own. If you want, I’ll post it. Just let me know in the comments that you have one you want to add to this blog post.

–Quinn McDonald is an artist and a creativity coach. She runs workshops and seminars in ideaglyphs and other forms of communication.

“Implied Line” Photography Example

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You don’t have to draw every single line in art. If you are drawing something familiar, and draw most of it, the eye will complete the rest for you. This is useful if your style is more abstract than photo … Continue reading →

Mother’s Day Gift for Artist Mom

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If your mom is an artist, or likes doodling, this gift will be just right for Mother’s Day. Buy (or make) a flower pot with an inspiring phrase on it. This one says “thrive,” which is great for both the … Continue reading →

Tutorial: Index Cards Do it All

Index cards are inexpensive and come in several sizes. I’ve written about using index card as a to-do list before. Now I’ve found an organizational system that combines index cards and rollabind disks and makes sense for organizational problems.

I carry a paper calendar because I need to know what isn’t happening as well as what is, and only paper calendars do that. In other words, If I’m meeting with a difficult client, I’m not booking another stressful event right next to it. My desktop calendar doesn’t show things that way, it simply shows dots, and sure, I could polka-dot up a few days, but without context I could run into trouble. Someone will certainly invent calendar software that shows holidays and works easily with my existing computer calendar, because I haven’t seen one yet.

My calendar goes with me, and so does a thin notebook and here is where the index cards come in. The thin notebook covers meeting notes, phone numbers, to-do lists and deadlines. Because I have a visual memory, I’ll know what side of the page that name and phone number was on, so using index cards wasn’t helping me. I couldn’t find my non-project notes fast enough.

Here’s the solution: I used some of the divider index cards and created a cover and separator pages, creating a book of its own. The book works on rollabind rings, giving it a spatial relationship. I can shift project cards and to do lists, but the notecards from phone calls and information (urls, ideas, people’s names) stay in the same order. When I get too many, I transfer them, in the same order, onto a storage “book.” Because I date each card, I keep them in date order and can find that great dim-sum restaurant in Chandler again, because I know it was on the left side of the page, right after the directions to the paper store in Tempe, which I looked for in March. My memory works that way.

The great thing about this system is that you can also file in alpha order, project order, geographical order–whatever makes sense to you. It’s not limited. Rollabind rings let you take out pages and reposition them without damage, and with complete ease, so the system becomes versatile. Remember the calendar? It’s also on rollabind disks, so I can pull out to-do lists and put them in the calendar as a reminder until the job is done. Or put notes about a client in the appointment day, so I’ll remember the personal and business details that work for a good relationship.

The combination of index cards, rollabind disks, calendars and imagination are limitless. You don’t have to purchase a lot of equipment to personalize your organizational system, and it doesn’t take up a lot of space. I like 4 x 6 cards for project notes, but nothing beats a 3 x 5 card for idea generation. And in this system, you can use both.

It’s a system that works and is ideal is you travel or have limited space to keep your work.

–Quinn McDonald is a trainer in business communications. She runs workshops in writing, speaking and giving presentations. She uses index cards to organize ideas for presentations and articles. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Tutorial: Desk Organizer, Brush holder

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Trying not to add plastic to the world means not buying it in the first place. I needed a place on my art desk to keep my brushes, pencils, and knitting needles. Might as well keep all the long, sharp … Continue reading →