Hello Peoples! And welcome to another week here at The Artistic Biker.  Man, do the weekends go quickly or what?  I had all kinds of major plans this past weekend and barely got anything accomplished.  I did, however, manage to get two MAJOR tasks completed.  I believe I have finally worked out a production schedule that will allow me to not only work in the journal, on my videos, podcast, U-stream, newsletter, and various challenges as well as my other forms of art and family life, but it will also let me keep my day job, at least for a while longer. And, this is just bonus as far as I’m concerned, it won’t kill me. I have been asking around the interwebs how other people manage to accomplish such tasks.  I know that this will pique the curiosity of a BUNCH of people.  If word ever gets out that I managed to work out a system for getting all of this done, I will be on the cover of every major business, art and tech magazine for the next 10 years.  And, I gotta tell ya, I’m DYING to share it with you.  But I want to make sure it works first. <evil grin>  No, seriously, you wouldn’t want me spilling all of that out for you only to come back a week later to tell you it was all crap.  So, let me play with it for a while. Let’s say, I don’t know, one week for an update to it’s efficacy, and two weeks to spill the whole system. If it still needs tweaking after the first week, I’ll let you know. Then I’ll try it for another week, yada yada yada.

This week’s Art Journal video was all about layers.  My mom and one of the other viewers at The Artistic Biker Live! were talking in the chat room about not “getting” layers.  The question invariably comes up, “Why would you paint or write something just to cover it up?”

For me, there are a couple of reasons right up front.  The first is that it adds to the back ground.  Layers almost always bleed through in some fashion and so the viewer is constantly finding something new and interesting about your work.  The second is that, even if no one will ever see your layer, it helps to build the mood and give the piece direction, especially if the piece is a free abstract.  When you lay down a foundation of blue paint and then start pasting things over it, then gesso, then acrylics or spray paint, you may never see the blue again.  But the texture of the paper/canvas may be altered and your mood will definitely be affected as you decide what images to use and where.

For this page, as usual, I start by gessoing to seal the paper.  Then I begin writing summertime song lyrics using sharpie markers in different directions.  This is a “Ghosting” technique I picked up from Leslie Herger of Comfortable Shoes Studios. You can see her video on that very technique HERE.

Then I drew and painted various images that make me think of summer like palm trees and bikini tops.  I took some close up photos of those images and then glazed the whole thing with purple, blue and black.  I used the end of my brush to add some swirlies into the paint.  I took a picture of Girl2 blowing bubbles and pasted her into the book.  The photos I took were edited with a “fish eye” effect in Paint Shop Pro 8.  I printed and cut them out and pasted them in as bubbles.  If you look closely at the printed bubbles, you can see the leaves of the palm tree, the polka dots of the bikini and the gauges of the motorcycle.  This was a lot of fun and I think the bubble my appear in some other work in progress.

You can watch the video at The YouTube, or just watch it in the embedded player below: