Monday, May 15, 2000

PAPER ARTS STUFF
Obviously, I'm a paper arts fan. I've broken all my links down into smaller, more specific categories, but these were unclassifiable.

My Own Two Hands is a one-woman project selling stationery and the like. It's a good link for inspiration and DIY stuff. Ad*Access is all about vintage advertising, and the best part is that most of these ads are NOT copyright, so you can use them, abuse them, and turn them into other art for decoupage and the like. Great, great stuff. This goes to the Beauty and Hygiene section, but there are -tons- more where this came from.

HP offers this image gallery to use in your own work copyright free. Most of it's kind of cheezy, but you may be able to find one or two that you can modify and mess with. If you're looking for cartography images, BizArt has a ton of it that you can use on business cards and stuff -- for free. And in case you're more into Origami instead, here's a site just for you.

I'm adding in all my arts links now -- just a warning to the non-crafty, it's all downhill for you from here for a while. I'd check back in a few days and count yourself lucky not to have this kind of addiction. :)

Monday, May 15, 2000

PHOTOGRAPHY & STUFF
My camera's turned me into one of those horrible people who is constantly living life behind the lens. Not that I mind -- there's so much you can do with pictures -- from webpages to scrapbooks to art stuff....

I've been collecting photography resources and projects exponentially. Here's a few:

Chris Keeney's got digital collage, photography, and artwork combined in this project, called "Synopsis". Ah, if only my own stuff looked this good. Talk about inspiration. The AfterImage Gallery, located physically in Texas, proves that in Texas, everything's bigger, including the talent. Great stuff to peruse and use. PhotoBetty rocks. It's an all-female group for photographers, and offers interviews, portfolios, and resource info. PhotoForum is an educational network with a searchable database of informational stuff, and a mailing list for photographers. The links list alone is worth a good afternoon's perusal. Polaroid, as one would expect, has a fantastic site on professional photography's creative uses.

Speaking of creative uses, there's these two techniques that I've only tried a few times, but would love to get into: Image Transfer and Emulsion Transfer, both of which give you different effects, through a similar process. Check the galleries on these -- they're really amazing.

Monday, May 15, 2000

Assemblage Boxes by Cornell
Wow -- this is what I'm hoping my altoid tins end up looking like. Bits of ephemera turned into magical little worlds. It's like alchemy.

Monday, May 15, 2000

A Million Clicks for Emily
I think I mentioned this before, but just in case -- this is a little girl here in San Diego who was dissed on a record contract. The whole city's coming together in support, including putting up this web site for her for free. They were hoping for a million clicks for the girl, and now they've got something like 11 million and counting -- if you hit the site enough, they're hoping to show the d*ckhead record execs that, in fact, she DOES have marketing potential.

Might as well help the little chickadee get her dream if you have a few extra seconds.

Monday, May 15, 2000

PRINTMAKING & THE GOCCO
Oh, man. I -so- love my Gocco. It's a home-publishing machine that allows you to "flash" special screens with a master on the back, and then print with oil-based ink on just about any surface your little heart desires. I wanted one for ages before someone on Webswap offered one to me for $25. (They're normally between $100 - $175 USD) Talk about jumping on that chance.

So I started looking for links, and found quite a few -- many of which were just trying to sell me things. (Add-ons to the machine are quite expensive -- if it weren't for the ONElist group on gocco, I'd never know that you could reuse screens, for instance -- and they're $17 for a pack of -five-.) However, there were a few worth my time, on the gocco in specific, and on printmaking in general.

Russell R. Dupont has a pretty great library about monoprint, though he's mainly a bookseller. The gallery he has lists a ton of other artists, most of whom do printmaking work. Zum Gali Gali offers a kick-ass resource on reduction block printing, which is mainly for eraser carved images, but can work for other kinds of hand-done multi-color printing. And for gocco-specific information and galleries and techniques, you can't beat this Gocco site. It comes from Australia or South Africa or New Zealand somewhere, so it's best if you can find local resources for master screens when you go to buy, though.