making zines!

I follow Austin Kleon on Instagram and he has been posting loads of little zines during the lockdown. He normally makes these as loving notes to include in his young son's lunchbox. Recently he has included little videos showing how he makes the zines. You can see his instructions here. Easy enough, with no glue and not even a scissors to cut the part that needs to be cut (just carefully tear along a crease) though a bone folder is an invaluable tool. I tried some zines myself, using images of maps from an Aramco World calendar that I didn't just want to bin - the maps are too interesting!

Although using a standard size (letter or A3 page) allows for easy reproduction of a zine, I wondered how the method would translate to larger and heavier pieces of paper. I decided to find out and pulled out some paper samples to turn into large zines.

The heavy pages are definitely harder to fold than the photocopy or typing paper... First fold in half.

Then fold in half again.

The third folding in half is even a challenge for the bone folder and the edges do not stay uniform.

Unfold back to the first folding so that centre creases are visible. The crease on the lower fold (if you consider that the upper part is open, as is obvious here with one of the calendar page zines).

With the heavier papers I took out my matte knife as I knew some cutting would be necessary, rather than simple tearing.

Unfold the whole page and the cuts are in the centre. It is easy to unfold and this is very useful if you are going to photocopy your finished zine. I was also curious about more formats for zines, again made from 1 initial standard sheet of paper that is easily reproducable, and found several youtube videos for making an 8 page and a 14 page zine, courtesy of autumnthing.

Pick the page up and push the ends together so that a central square is automatically formed.

Continued pushing will bring the "squared" pages together and voilà, your zine is ready to become whatever you want! With heavy paper you may need to crease the folds again with the bone folder.

Happy New Year!

In the last few hours of 2013, I am patting myself on the back for keeping up my resolutions of last December: I started this blog, set up a facebook page, got involved in the charity fundraiser Big Egg Hunt Dublin, read a slew of books, re-booted my dream journal, and kept up a daily notes journal (suggested by, you guessed it, Austin Kleon in Steal Like an Artist!). While I plan to keep up everything from last year, and of course keep painting, I am planning to start work on my writing again. It has been a long while since I have actually set pen to paper to work on prose or poetry but it has always been in the background niggling at me. I have another list of books which are waiting for my eyes, and with the recent acquisition of a large piece of black leather, I have at least 5 gift books to make. Recently a woman at the office where I work part time, has kindly and patiently begun teaching a group of us how to crochet on our lunch breaks. So I will be starting a new crochet project in the new year too! 2014 will be another exciting and busy year and I would like to wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe New Year!

Signs

 The late 50s does not seem that historically long ago to me, and I remember my father telling me about a sign on a hospital door in Toronto (where he was a new immigrant) saying "No Irish" at the end of an advert for a job.

So when I was a kid in 1971, it was no wonder I loved the anti-establishment song "Signs" by the hippy Ottawa group Five Man Electrical Band. In their song, most signs were a bad thing, as they usually had a negative aspect about them.

Since then, however, I have come to enjoy various signs which catch my attention for their good advice - as in this manipulated sign which appeared in Austin Kleon's book Steal Like an Artist,

their positive affirmation (though this may be graffiti - I am not sure as I found it on the Cass Art facebook page),

charming double meaning (this is a road sign at Nice airport taken out of context, but appropriate to my recent bad experience with French train service),

and/or just plain old surreality! (I know I posted this Dublin sign before, but couldn't resist doing so again.)

The eggs are gone, so now I have been catching up on other stuff!  I finished reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens), a whodunnit that I thoroughly enjoyed.  I have also just finished reading Steal Like an Artist  for the second time in 30 days!  I have been preparing images for the update of the lorjames art website, including the following:

The above is entitled Chicago Thumb Wars from the Moments series of paintings on raw canvas.  I started this body of work last year (for more details go to ART link on right bar).  Below is Auspices -- both of these paintings were inspired by our visit to Chicago in 2010.  I'll be starting back to work on this series next week.