Staying at Home and Travelling to France with Vivian Swift

Would you rather savor the joys of home or travel to France?

With these two books by author/artist Vivian Swift you can do both. They can each be picked up and enjoyed for a long read or just a brief sojourn. But really, they are more of an education and an experience than just books to read.

The first, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, I bought several years ago. It's publication date is 2008. Subtitled A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put, it is Ms. Swift's record, captured in words and watercolors, of coming to rest for a year in a village on the Long Island Sound after ten years of world travel. 

Through the pages of her monthly entries Ms. Swift shares her days and nights, reminisces about her many travels, records the weather, introduces her cats and neighbors, looks to the stars, drinks tea, muses on sweaters and mittens, and finds new uses for her now languishing suitcases. 

I know why I bought this book - I love Ms. Swift's watercolors and illustrations. They express the joy of the every day. Simple lines. Clear colors. All that I strive for in my own sketchbook renderings.

The text is handwritten by the author which would normally put me off, but the words are clearly formed and not at all difficult to read. Her writing is energetic and entertaining. I feel I have stumbled upon one of her secret art journals.

Her collection of teacups

I am looking forward to the colors of autumn 

that Vivian Swift captures here.

---

As enamored as I was with her first book, I was delighted to discover that Ms. Swift has a second book titled Le Road Trip. It has a publication date of 2012 and lucky for us she gave up on staying put. Here is her chronicle of a trip to France with her husband James. In her inimitable style she paints the sites of Paris, Bayeux, the Normandy beaches, Mont Saint-Michel, Chartres (all places I have been), and the villages and towns in Brittany and Bordeaux (haven't made it there yet).

Laundry day in Normandy

Although it is a book about her travels in France it is also a book about the art of travel: the anticipation, comforts and discomforts, ups and downs, wrong turns, dimly lit hotel rooms, and coming home.

It is full of more of her lovely illustrations — cafes, steeples, gardens, and countrysides — and her lively text. But, be warned: this book may prompt your own excursion to Paris and beyond. 

Ooh-là-là! That could be a good thing. 

Les gâteaux

Two More for My Inspiration Bookshelf

I received these two books as gifts over the holidays and I am very happy to add them to my Inspiration Bookshelf.

Urban Watercolor Sketching by Felix Scheinberger

Urban sketching is simply a phrase used to describe drawing on location, indoors or out, whether one is in her hometown or a foreign city, visiting the desert or ocean, or sketching people or pets. It's a way of capturing one's world. Paint what's around you.

There is so much more in this book than just pages of how-to. Oh sure, Mr. Scheinberger, who is an illustrator and designer living in Berlin, offers tips galore but also a bit of philosophy and art history. It is chock full of examples of his own work. It is an entire watercolor course in one place. 

Plus, I love his style: pen and black ink drawings combined with watercolor.

My version of the cover image

 of Urban Watercolor Sketching.

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Art Escapes by Dory Kanter

This book can't help but jump start my creative self with demonstrations, page-a-day ideas, and inspirations for artistic journals. Ms. Kanter takes a look at collage, watercolor, doodling, and even combining two paintings with paper weaving. 

Also helpful are her pages on color triads. Who knew color triads had personality? There are the full-spectrum, earth, sun, and water triads. Her explanation of perspective looks valuable. I have difficulty with perspective and shadowing. Must be a math thing. 

She gives careful step-by-step instructions on creating a no-sew, fabric sketchbook portfolio to protect and carry a sketchbook along with the basic supplies one needs for sketchbook, watercolor, and collage tool kits. 

I like her have-fun-and-don't-take-yourself-too-seriously approach. Very encouraging. I am ready to Art On!

Cool effect with paper weaving
from Art Escapes.

On Making a Literary Life and No Excuses Art Journaling

I searched for the book Making a Literary Life (here) and was happy to find a used hardcover copy at Powell's online bookstore. As I had to pay a flat shipping charge anyway, I threw caution to the wind and ordered a book on art journal techniques as well. 

They both arrived within the week. I was afraid there might be underlining or highlighting or marginalia that would distract me (plus mar the book). That is one disadvantage of ordering used books online - I can't hold them and determine their condition for myself.

Anyway, I needn't have worried as both previously-owned books arrived in good condition.

I am happy to note that Carolyn See's book on a making a literary life is just as entertaining as it was when I read it years ago. I like a book on writing that includes the highways and byways of the author's experiences. Ms. See's book is full of these as well as humor and sound advice.

She writes in the introduction that her intention is to help a new writer - or someone even thinking about becoming a writer - through the maze of finding her or his voice, writing, getting published, and what to do afterward. Even though I have been living a writer's life for decades, it is still helpful to read her thoughts on starting out and to recall my own first days of putting pen to paper.

This is not a book about grammar and spelling and punctuation, but a book about creating a life of writing. I love it.

***

My other passion - alongside books, writing, and reading - falls in the visual arts world. I snooped through Powell's inventory of art journal books and found No Excuses Art Journaling: Making time for creativity by Gina Rossi Armfield.

Her idea is to use a desk calendar/planner as an art journal and a way "to capture the moments in your days." There are ideas on ways to spice up your journal. She shows how to add envelopes and sheets of watercolor papers to enhance the pages and offers monthly prompts and inspiration. 

On a daily basis she suggests picking a color and a word of the day along with drawing a pattern or design of some sort and the weather. Simple ways to keep your journal going.

Ms. Armfield's book also features twelve guest artists and has photographs of their take on her ideas. It is great resource. And very colorful.

I am off this weekend to a one-day workshop called 'Creating a WaterCOLOR Journal' in which I hope to learn something about color theory and color mixing. And who knows what else.  Then I plan on pulling out my art journal and playing. No excuses.

The Art of Whimsical Lettering by Joanne Sharpe

What I have found that I really like to do is take art classes, watch art tutorials online, and buy art supplies. That barely leaves any time for making art, but I do the best I can.

Over the past five years or so, I have taken multiple watercolor classes, had private art lessons, attended two visual journal workshops, dabbled in calligraphy, spent a weekend on a watercolor painting retreat, filled many sketchbooks, and generally had a splendid time doing all of that.

Because I am a writer, the idea of combining words and images strikes a creative chord with me. I tried calligraphy - even had a private lesson or two - but have to admit I don't have the patience for that type of formal lettering.  

So I was happy the day I was nosing around YouTube looking for a series of Strathmore Artist Papers tutorials and stumbled across short videos by Joanne Sharpe which in turn introduced me to her book The Art of Whimsical Lettering. 

I haven't actually put my hands on the physical book, but I do have it on order. In the meantime, I have watched every online tutorial of hers that I can find. And I took a peek online at several pages of the book.

Her whole point is to use your own handwriting and then font-it-up with the jazzy techniques. She loves color and doodles and is all about using your own print or cursive letters - or a combination of both - to add text to art and visual journals, day planners, art projects, greeting cards, canvases, and stationery.

This is her mantra: Play. Practice. Write. Repeat.

In the book she suggests starting a journal to practice and develop your own style. As if I needed any encouragement to begin another journal! She just uses an inexpensive composition notebook for hers. I am in luck as I have many of those around the house just waiting to be filled.

Also in the book, she lays out the materials she uses - pens, watercolors, markers - and again, lucky me, since I am such an art supply hoarder, I have most of them. And what I don't have, I just improvise.

I like her free-style doodles and borders and letters. It is the sort of casual art I like to create. Nothing too serious. Just a flourish or two here and there.

Her ideas may seem intuitive to some of you, but I not only need the print examples but also a visual demonstration. Hence her book and the videos. All of that helps. 

Below is a sample of a page I did using my own handwriting and mixing it up a bit with some ideas from Ms. Sharpe. It's pretty shaky, mainly because I don't know what I am doing, but you can see that a few of her techniques include thickening up the letters, adding color, and putting down shadows. 

I chose the word holiday because it contains letters that go above and below the line along with round and vertical letters. Ms. Sharpe encourages practicing writing words and not just copying an alphabet. That helps put one's own personality into the letters.

Now is my chance to begin my very own Whimsical Lettering journal and play with my stash of art supplies.

In Which I Get Glittered and Glued

A couple of months ago I wrote about attending a demonstration on how to start and keep an Art Journal. (You can read about that here.) I was so impressed with presenter April Martin that when the art supply store that hosted the demo added her new workshop to its class schedule I quickly signed up.

For four Tuesday nights a group of us - maybe ten - glued and glittered, pasted and painted, penciled and stenciled, and generally had a grand old time creating our very own journals. 

I do believe all of our inner artists were released!

April provided all sorts of ideas and instructions on different ways to prepare our blank pages and then ideas on how to fill them.

I am not very fearless when it comes to this but as the classes went on I got a little freer and more experimental. Mostly I played with different supplies and colors - watercolor and acrylic paints and all sorts of products I had no idea even existed - to prepare my journal's background pages. 

Here are two samples of prepped pages:

And here is a sample of a page with added images:

The background on this page is simply a torn up small brown paper bag that a few of the art supplies I purchased came in. 

I cut the images out of sheets of decorative papers that are available at craft and art supply stores. Someone else has done a lot of the work for me! I just need to know how to wield a pair of scissors...

The process is to keep layering images and words and colors to give the whole page a distressed look and express some sort of feeling. I am not that great with the feeling part so I decided to create a page based on a writing theme.

I started with this...more decorative papers:

 Then....

....I found the bookmark in my stash - it came with the book The Typewriter Girl. I pulled Snoopy at his typewriter and the other artwork from various sources. You can't tell from the photo but the background is a golden yellow.

Right now I am just playing around with layout and I will probably add some more layers although I am just not sure how to do that without cluttering up the page too much. 

I like the idea of using bookmarks on my art journal pages. I have some colorful ones from the many bookstores I have visited and it seems like a good way to preserve them. For some reason they rarely actually end up marking my place in a book.

In Which I Make My Report on Art Journals and Little Free Libraries

Last Saturday I attended two events at local stores featuring local folks. Here, as promised, is my report.

Art Journal demo with April Martin

This was a 90-minute, free demonstration on keeping an art journal. April's journal is more a layering of bits and bobs on the page than it is keeping a diary with drawings. She has hacked a Moleskin notebook and filled its pages with color and quotes and cutouts. Very creative and fun to look at. 

She said she almost always starts with a quote or a printed image and then lets her feelings guide her as she adds color with inks and paint and chalk. She uses stencils and crumpled papers and stick-on letters to add texture. She lets her muse - and her feelings - be her guide.

There was no drawing or sketching involved as I thought there would be. It was all glue and gesso and quite messy but messy in a good way. April showed us how to add pages of different papers to the basic notebook. How to distress the pages for a vintage look. How to add texture and layers and just to have fun with it. 

Her message: You can't do it wrong. And if you make what you think is a mistake, there is always a way to change a mistake into a happy accident. 

She was a lively presenter. This was her first demo and it was quite well attended - there were maybe 25 of us. 

Below are some shots of the process:

Here April is adding pages to her basic Moleskin journal.

She began with the image of the couple and went from there.

This is closer to the finish. You can see that she has done some stenciling and distressing on the pages. She also added a quote which she stretched across the gutter.

Below are random photos from her art journal. She kindly gave me permission to use them.

Although there was no book connected with this event, here are a couple of titles I found that seem to fit the type of visual journal that April demonstrated:

The Art Journal Workshop by Traci Bunkers

Stash and Smash: Art Journal Ideas by Design Originals

Little Free Libraries

This small event was held at the local, independent bookstore. Three people presented. The first to speak was a woman who was instrumental in getting 30 or so little free libraries installed in a poorer neighborhood in Louisville. She reported that they were kept well-stocked with donations and well-used both by children and adults.

Another woman had gotten one of these little structures for her birthday and it was installed in front of her house. She is a publisher's representative and so has quite an inventory to draw on to keep her free library filled.

The fellow who rounded out the panel was a carpenter/woodworker who had made one of the libraries for a client using recycled and leftover materials. He said that once the library had been installed, the client had an ice cream social and invited his neighbors to introduce them to the new 'kid' on the block. I thought this was a grand idea.

Copies of The Little Free Library Book by Margret Aldrich were on hand. It contains a history of these structures, offers a list of construction materials and plans, and offers up lots and lots of photos.

What I learned from this presentation, though, was that while I really like the idea of the Little Free Library I don't want one in my yard. 

On Art Journals and Little Free Libraries

I feel like such a slacker. I am not reading anything new. I don't read book reviews. My To Be Read list is languishing. My shelves of Books to be Read stand forlorn and untouched. 

Instead of reading, I find myself working crossword puzzles. At least that activity has to do with words.

But, there are two events on tap this weekend that I plan to attend that will perhaps get me out of this slump. One has to do with art and the other with little libraries.

First up is an Art Journaling demo. I am excited about this one because an art journal combines words and images. It is a diary with drawings. I am sure I will get new ideas. I have read quite a few books on this way of recording one's life, but seeing someone actually work on a art journal is a better way to learn.

This is a free event sponsored by a local, independent art supply store. The store regularly holds these free demonstrations and I recently took one on using watercolor pencils. The store also hosts all sorts of art classes and I have taken quite a few over the past couple of years. I do have a weakness for art supplies (which probably doesn't surprise anyone).

The second event is being held the same day at our local, independent bookstore and concerns Little Free Libraries. In case you are not familiar with these, they are little neighborhood libraries on the street.  Some are quite elaborate (like the one above) and some are just a box filled with books to be shared with neighbors and passersby. There will be a woodworker in attendance who has built a couple of these Little Libraries and a report from a woman who received a Little Free Library as a birthday present.

"Take a book, return a book" is the motto. I see on the website that there are already two of these libraries in my neighborhood. Here is the website: Little Free Library


I will take copious notes and be back next time to regale you with stories about keeping an art journal and setting up a Little Free Library. Many of my neighbors are quite bookish and I am sure we would all be glad to have a library of our own to use as a book exchange.

Journal Your Way by Gwen Diehn

Since taking the weekend journal-making workshop last month, I have been raiding the library for books that offer more examples and ideas not only for handmade journals but for what to fill their pages with.

(If you are interested, I wrote about the workshop here.)

What appeals to me - and has always appealed to me although I couldn't really say what it was until now - is the layering of papers, colors, words, images, sketches, watercolors, pen and ink drawings, calligraphy, and textures on the pages.

Journal Your Way: Designing & Using Handmade Books offers the best instructions and examples in all of the four or five books I have found on the subject. Not only does author/artist Gwen Diehn give clear instructions on making different journals, she guides the reader through a series of questions to discern what type of journal would best fill his or her needs.

She asked eight people to choose a journaling activity that appealed to them - creating a travel, garden, new project, or learning journal. She then designed a book for each of them to use for three months and presents their reflections on how the journal worked for them and photos of the finished/ongoing project. 

It is fascinating to see the different types of books that Ms. Diehn created for each person. For example, one holds daily watercolor paintings; one incorporates information about different spices and tiny vials containing certain seeds and herbs; and one uses tiny envelopes within its pages to store memorabilia.

The section on The Basics explains the tools and materials needed for creating your own journal. The Page Building Materials and Techniques section is full of great ideas on paper choices, using colored pencils, watercolors, stencils and stamps, and crayons. There is even a quick tutorial in drawing. 

Ms. Diehn then offers instructions for making sixteen different journals from a simple pamphlet type to sewn hardcover books. Although some look quite complicated (the finished products are gorgeous), the instructions offered are clear and one could work up to the more sophisticated journals and covers.

There is a wonderful section on journal keeping past and present with samples from ships' logs to Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Trevelyon's Miscellany from the 1600s. Photos of present-day journals are rich with images and ideas.

This is a terrific book to have on hand. I love looking at the photos showing how other people have used their journals to document their lives and they have certainly given me ideas for my own artistic journal endeavors.