Working on my Book

This is soooooo much fun.  For those of you who don't know I am working on a book about - what else- digital printing alternative surfaces.  

My team and I are going to be doing a small test book of a couple chapters, so I am busily finishing several parts of chapters for us to use.  Today I am working on pairing images to surfaces for the second section of the Recycled Chapter. This section of the chapter is about melting plastics and this afternoon I will be precoating the surfaces and sizing images for printing tomorrow. 

I won't be sharing any of the pictures from the book here - you'll have to wait for a copy when my book comes out in the spring of 2013.

If you want to get my latest posts on digital alternative surfaces make sure you visit my Digital Alternative Surfaces site.

This is part of my sister sites Digital Alternative Journaling

and Digital Alternative Studio.

I will be publishing an updated version of my "Wrap it Up: Journals with Style"  The updated version will contain videos interspersed through the book.  It will be available shortly as an iPad version.  Stay tuned on the release!

Back to Blogging

Lots of work going on with my upcoming book.  Digital Printing Alternative Surfaces:the definitive source.  Just finishing the beginning of the chapter on recycled surfaces of which beverage cans are first  This is the set up for printing on my Epson R3000.  A video on placing the cans on the carrier sheet and printing them will appear in the iPad version,  The video is just about done.

Aside from my book I've been a bit busy lately in a good way.  An article was due for both Maggie Grey's Workshop on the Web (December issue) and also Digital Art Creation Magazine.  The DAC magazine is free to read on the web and is also available on the iPad.  iPad versions are free for the next one at least and then you have to purchase it to read it on your iPad.  The iPad version will have videos.  The issue coming out soon I wrote on digital printing on silk and the next one is about digital printing recycled plastics.

Spent some time in Taos and did a keynote and one day workshop for SLMM-the Society of Layerists in Mixed Media.  Pretty long drive from here, but I got to see some of the balloons from the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta while passing through Albuquerque. Very nice.  No pictures though, just looking.

During my drive to and from Taos I listened to the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
I put off reading it for a long time since I heard rumblings of how uncool Steve was.  He is one of my heroes, so I didn't want to get up close and personal with his dark side.  It was a pleasant surprise when I looked at his quirks in another way and was very inspired with how he changed the world.  I loved the book and am reading the actual book now.  He is still one of my heroes. He was truly one of a kind.

So now we come to what I have been doing besides traveling and working on my book for the past month.  I have been putting a type of kit together combining inkAID precoats, fabric that includes an instructional video.  There are 9 fabrics and you can read about them on my Digital Alternative Studio website.

My enews will go out next week between October 23-25 and all the details are in there.  I have combinations of the fabric for sale on my KathyAnne Art site currently, but my video and other information won't be ready until early next week.  If you are on my enews you will be notified right away. 

Feel free to peruse my new sister websites.  Starting with Digital Alternative Surfaces you can see the other sites from inside links.  Or you can just visit- Digital Alternative Studio and Digital Alternative Journaling.   

Artist Profile Barbara Schneider

Fiber Artist Barbara Schneider 

"My ongoing interest in the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi, finding beauty in things that are imperfect, impermanent and incomplete is at the core of all my artwork.  I try to capture the essence of images made of light and movement, images that are in infinitely variable.  What does the eye see? What does the camera see" What does the mind see"

My Leaves series is an exploration and interpretation of natural images by enlarging and reshaping them.  I collect leaves, pods, flowers, grasses and look closely at their structure and shape.  In particular, I like to collect these natural objects at the end of summer when they have begun to wither and fragment.  Enlarging them in my work process allows me to see them as sculptural objects.  I look at the play of light upon surfaces and shaping the pieces introduces a new element-light and shadow interacting with the undulating surfaces."

In the first week of July this year Barbara Schneider spent a week in my workshop in Greenville New York at Hudson River Valley Art/Fiber Workshops.  It was an incredible group of woman who gathered to learn and experiment with digital printing alternative surfaces.  The artist's present were like sponges with the plethora of material thrown at them and the results were many awesome alternative prints. Barbara was no exception as we printed one of her leaf images on several substrates.  

One of the things I loved was the time we had (the workshop was 5 days) as I was able to spend a nice bit of time with everyone in the workshop while their images printed which included time with Barbara, her surfaces and images.  When you start to experiment with alternative surfaces a great place to start is trying the same image on the various substrates.  When you switch images you don't really get an overall view of what can happen in printing the variables. Above you can see Barbara's image on many substrates. Of course it is always hard to see in pictures, but the textures and impact of the image can still be seen.  Barbara made some notes about precoats and surfaces as she worked.
(If you click on the images you will be able to see more detail in the print) 

With her fiber art, Barbara has developed 2 processes that she uses to create her leaf pieces.  These processes and some background on how the concept developed and fits into her overall aesthetic is the content of her new DVD "Three-Dimnesional Fiber Art: Shape & Texture, Light & Shadow"just released.  You can view a snip of her dvd on the same page here.

The video workshop is available for HD and for Standard Video.

You can visit Barbara's website to see more of her work.  It's worth a visit to see her different series and the scope of her work. 

It was wonderful to meet and work with Barbara Schneider.  Her work is interesting, her attention to detail is inspiring and it's exciting to see her DVD first hand!  

Making Videos on Your iPhone

Making videos on my iPhone seems like a great idea.  I know when I want to capture a certain image as I am out and about, my iPhone is usually there and I can take the shot.  There are many apps for photography on your iPhone and Adobe even has a Photoshop Touch app now that is truly excellent to manipulate photos right on your iPhone or iPad.  Last month on my KathyAnne Art site I posted a workshop on Blending Images using the Photoshop Touch app for the iPad.

So I ask myself why not videos on my iPhone?  In my classroom in Texas in February I tried an experiment had some of the students shoot video from my iPhone, so I could edit them and post them for the classes private viewing.  This enabled me to be able to leave the participants with more information then would have been available in class handouts.  In another classroom situation the videos did not turn out as well, but it taught me a lot about how to go about it.

CLICK HERE

Recently I met Jules over the internet on a webinar about his program iPhone Video Hero.  If you click the link in the last sentence it will take you to his site.  It is a bit of a sales pitch, but I have taken his course and it has some really great content.  Plus Jules is accessible and answers email promptly.  If you are interested you should check it out on the CLICK HERE link above.

Here is a short clip of cutting beverage cans from my upcoming book on digital printing alternative surfaces and a video workshop series I am working on.  It's a practice set up from my iPhone 4s.

Sketchbook Challenge Blog Hop

Hello, welcome to The Sketchbook Challenge Blog Hop.  If you make a comment on this blog you will be in the drawing for 2 different prizes.  Winners will be drawn by me on Friday the 29th.  Don't forget you have to make a comment for me to add your name to the qualifiers.

The prizes:

A one year membership to KathyAnne Art worth $35.00.   You will be able to access a new workshop every month as a member and all the monthly workshops that are already on the site.  Also the royalty free images are free to members.  You can visit my Inside KathyAnne Art blog to see workshop descriptions for the member free workshops -

Another prize is the book "Making Handmade Books: 100+Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden given away by Art Plantae Today  a $19.95 value.

Now this one if for everyone.  I am giving a coupon for a workshop on my KathyAnne Art site-
Studio Journals Mini Workshop a $15.00 value.  All you have to do is hop on over to Digital Alternative Journaling site to my new post Building Journal Pages on my iPad to get the coupon code.  All the information on how to retrieve the code is in that blog post along with the word to put in the coupon code box in the cart on KathyAnne Art.  Simple as that.

Enjoy some pictures of my project from the book.

It was wonderful to be asked to participate in The Sketchbook Challenge book.  Since my work starts with digital images, all the textures and elements in my Forest Book 2 piece featured in the book are digitals on some type of alternative surfaces.  Elements is the chapter that my work is in.

In this image you can see a composition using digitally printed watercolor paper and encaustic on the right.  On the left the page is comprised of digital prints on recycled beverage cans strung on thin hemp and crocheted together before attaching it to the page.

The page on the right is digitally needlepoint canvas with digital prints on lutradur heat distressed and attached to the canvas.  The lutradur has been torn and layered with wire and beads and a border of beads runs around the lutradur composition.  On the left is a mixture of textured elements and a digital print on tyvek.  The tyvek is cut into small pieces and then melted to stack with wire and twigs.

 This part of the sketchbook contains the images and information from my photoshop files.  This is about the watercolor paper prints that were torn and assembled with encaustic in the first picture of my Forest Book 2.

This part of my sketchbook has some pieces of test prints that didn't get into the final project.  It also has pictures of my digitally printers plates that are on one page of Forest Book 2.

The Sketchbook Challenge

Well it's almost here "The Sketchbook Challenge" a book by Sue Bleiweiss.  My piece Forest Book 2 is included in this wonderful book as well as the studio journal mapping the creation of my project.  I will be excited to see the book and will probably only have to wait a few more days for my copy. 

There is some exciting news since there will be a blog hop among the artists (this includes me) who have work in Sue's book. The blog hop celebration starts June 25th and ends July 10th.  There are $1200 worth of prizes that will be given away from the artists participating.  Winners will be drawn randomly from comments on the posts during the blog hop.  Each artist will chose people from their comments for the prizes they will give away.  For more information see Sue's blog post today.

My piece is of course composed of many digital prints and then assembled on 6 pages 10" x 12" to complete the Forest Book.  Each page is a separate creation containing digital prints on surfaces such as lutradur, metal printers plates, watercolor paper, beverage cans and more.  Encaustic and crochet  is used as well as other techniques in the assemblages of the pages.    More to come as we gear up for the blog hop.

Oh and before I forget I will be giving away a  years membership to KathyAnne Art, my member website.  The value of this is $35.00, but the beauty of it is the over 700 royalty free images and the monthly workshops that currently total over 40 with new ones every month.  Remember to visit here on June 27th and comment on my post to get your chance to win.  The winner will be drawn from the comments on the blog post from the blog hop.

Also I will have a free coupon code for the workshop on my KathyAnne Art site that was created based on my studio journal seen in the Sketchbook Challenge book.  Anyone who reads my blog that day will be able to find that coupon code from a url I will post and then download and enjoy their free workshop.  You can access the workshop description for "Studio Journals Mini Workshop" on my Inside KathyAnne Art Blog.

I also have another give away- Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden Total retail value $19.95!  

Be sure to join all of us as we celebrate the release of Sue's book!

Forest Book 2  Front and Back Cover

Detail shots below

Digital Printing Alternative Surfaces

Don't you just love the internet?  I recently returned from teaching a 3 day workshop for the Texas Federation of Fiber Artists.  I was also the juror of their show "Fiberwerkes 2012 and I gave the keynote at the dinner "Untwine Your Mind: Beyond Fiber". It was a brilliant week and I was surrounded by all sorts of wonderful people.  It was a great time and recently a couple people blogged on the event.  Diane Sandlin who was my "angel" in the classroom and everything else.  Then Leslie Tucker Jennison who is in the 8 That Create group I am in.  It was great to meet Leslie for the first time.  When you visit the link that is attached to Leslie's name, go back and look at this link also- it is about the workshop Leslie too from Mary Ruth Smith.  Mary Ruth was one of the instructors at the conference.  She was also one of the artist's I juried into the show and her work is just awesome.

Diane and Leslie beat me to any blogging on the subject and I wanted you all to see their posts.  I know for myself that every time I teach a new group or meet other artists interested in digital alternative surfaces I get all sorts of ideas on pushing this process.  So many ideas came to me when working on my keynote and researching the artists for my keynote.  I continue to grow, get tons of new ideas and spark my creativity!!!

So today along with the other links I will show you how to access one of my new domains.

Digital Alternative Surfaces.  I am building content in a few new places which will keep me hopping I the blog category and keep me creating and pushing the digital surface.  This is going to be a great year for creativity, but aren't they all? 

8 That Create

Catchy title for a new artist group.  Like our title says, we are "8 that create".  Our group includes, myself, Kathyanne White, Sue Bleiweiss (the one who pulled us all together), Jane Davilla, Jamie Fingal, Gloria Hansen, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Liz Kettle and Carol Sloan.

8 That Create is a group of professional, artists that explore the use of

innovative mixed media techniques to manipulate, alter and enhance the

appearance of their chosen surface. 

Our mission is to support each other in our individual artistic journeys and to

provide inspiration to others through our group exhibitions, publications,

website and blog. 

Each of us has introduced ourselves on our 8 that create blog.  There you can follow what is coming up for our group.  We will have our first internet show in March so stay tuned to see what happens then or better check our website for details sometime in the future.  My piece is in the works and I will post "in the beginning pictures" in about 2 weeks.  Check our blog from time to time and keep up with the happenings of "8 that create".

IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES- WE DO!!!!!

Journal Quilts

On September 15 and 16, 2012 I will be teaching a pair of one day workshops at the Fuller Craft Museum.  (More details will be coming later).   One of the workshops is Journal Quilts and since I have been working on my journal wall here and here in my studio, I have been putting together a couple of journals quilts while I work on other things. It helps me through my pondering time as I develop work.

These pieces are around 16" x 20" and the base is canvas with dyes and/or paints for coloring.  They are of course in the works and I will post some more in a bit as they grow.  I will be expanding my journal wall, but until I do, these are sitting on one of my tables to be accessible when the mood hits.