Folk Fest Drawings!!!

The 2011 Winnipeg Folk Fest has come and gone, and this year I made a point of doing more drawings. At certain times I tried to sit close to the stages so I could see the performers' faces. Drawing the eyes of people on stage was the most difficult aspect of this type of drawing. People watching at Folk Fest is hard to beat, so there was a great assortment of subjects for my sketchbook. All my drawings were done as marker washes.
This was a guy from the Band Dawes:


This is a singer/songwriter named Chuck Prophet. I saw a very enjoyable solo set at Little Stage on the Prairie.


This is a member of the band Jaune Toujours- they are a really fun Folk Rock/Roots/Balkan band that in some aspects reminds me of Cat Empire.

The Sketchbook Project

I am pleased to announce that my sketchbook has made it to Brooklyn!! I submitted a sketchbook for ArtHouse coops 2011 sketchbook project. I have mentioned this project previously on the blog, and now the sketchbook has actually made it all the way to Booklyn where it will be catalogued and then it gets to travel the united states for about six months stopping at art galleries in Texas, Washington, Florida,California, Georgia, Illinois, and Maine.

It was a little sad for me to send it away and probably never see it again. However, it was also exciting for me to send my drawings away somewhere for strangers to look at.
The sketchbook project takes small moleskin sketchbooks from artists around the world (an astonishing 28838 artists were involved this year!) The sketchbooks tour galleries as a travelling exhitbit where people can take out my sketchbook as though it were a library book. At the end of the tour it will end up in Brooklyn where it will be a part of a permanent sketchbook library.
I have posted many of the drawings from the sketchbook on the blog over the past few months, but I felt the need to document the sketchbook before saying goodbye to it for good, so I did take a video of all the pages, and haven't decided yet if I should edit and upload it to youtube. I treated my sketchbook as a form of a visual jounal, and actually managed to keep my drawings all more or less in the same style throughout. It was a challenge to stick with a theme the whole sketchbook, but it was very satisfying in the end.
check out Art House coop and their other projects they have going on:
http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

Oh and I had forgotten to actually promote my own website on my blog!
My online portfolio is up and running, though could still use a few tweeks perhaps.
www.juliamark.ca

Images-a-Day Week 2

Here is a little glimpse into my progress with my image-a-day project. A few of these images are doubling for the image-a-day personal challenge as well as the Sketchbook Project.

# 6


#7


#8


#9

The Sketchbook Project!!!

Today I received in the mail my new moleskin sketchbook for participation in the Sketchbook Project!! The sketchbook project is an initiative through Art House Co-op. The idea of the sketchbook project is that artists fill their sketchbooks, according to a chosen theme, send them back to the Art House, and then the sketchbooks tour galleries in the United States as a sketchbook library. The slogan for it is:

"It's like a concert tour but with sketchbooks."

The sketchbooks are made available for people to check them out like library books and then returned where they will be moved on to the next city. This is the fifth year the Sketchbook project is in existence and I am SO stoked to fill my sketchbook and send it off. The project deadline is mid-January.

Here is a good CNN video about the Project: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2009/04/27/barral.sketchbook.project.cnn?iref=videosearch

A Peek at My Sketchbook

This one is part collage, part marker, part ink, and part fun.


This one is a quote by the French writer Voltaire.

I bought a new sketchbook while in London, and feel much more drive to fill this sketchbook with ideas, and images. I suddenly have a different attitude towards sketchbooks which makes it really satisfying to fill blank pages with drawings. Here are a couple of recent drawings that were inspired or partially derived from an old book I bought at an MCC store on "the Age of Enlightenment."

Lynda Barry's "What it is"

I spent a healthy amount of time at the library today, and found Lynda Barry's Graphic Novel/sketchbook diary titled "What it is." It is a lovely compilation of self-directed visual exercises into an exploration of images, making things, creating, and attempting to explain some of the reason behind art as a stream of consciousness. Lynda Barry is a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher, known for various comic book series, books, and particularly her comic strip “Ernie Pook's Comeek.” Her book reminds me just a little of the recently published Kal Barteski book, "Love Life." Lynda says that much of what is in the book are exercises she uses with her students to get ideas flowing and the mind engaged in making something it doesn't have to think about. Based heavily in a combination of drawings, writing, and collage each page is full of something-sometimes silly images, sometimes ominous, sometimes endearing, and sometimes with dream-like qualities.
Drawn and Quarterly, the publisher of the book, describes it as follows:

"What It Is” is based on “Writing the Unthinkable” which is based on a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or remember. Lynda explores the depths of the inner and outer realms of creation and imagination, where play can be serious, monsters have purpose, and not knowing is an answer unto itself."

Mixed in between the pages of artistic Inquisitions are pages devoted to telling Lynda Barry's story of what art means to her. She tells her own story of growing up, creating, and what it meant for her to create and how that changed as she got older. These sections are told in graphic novel form, but less confined than most, with more of a sketchbook feel to them.
Most pages have yellow legal loose leaf hidden in the background, and I would have loved to have seen the original pages-would love to touch them, and feel the textures of the papers and fabrics that had been glued down to complete each collage page.

I recommend this book for anyone who likes to create, and who sometimes feels stuck, because this book will help to inspire you a little(at least it did for me). Or, even if you don't feel stuck, check it out anyways. I find myself not satisfied with only viewing it at the library, and may have to order it for myself.

Here is an amazon link to it: http://www.amazon.ca/What-Lynda-Barry/dp/1897299354/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277768900&sr=8-1#noop