I don’t like most of what I paint outdoors, but the process is the point; and I know it will make me a better painter. (Gaye Adams)

There are all kinds of fancy , expensive things you can get to go Art outside. Don’t be stupid. All you really need is some colour, a surface, and a markmaking tool.

En plein air is a French expression which means “in the open air.” Don’t let the pretty word make you think it’s complicated! It’s a great way to really see things as they are- when they are right in front of you, not back at the studio. Or, yunno, your kitchen table.

You don’t need to get  complicated- while that’s an ideal way to paint some days in some places, other times even the nicest pochade box is cumbersome.

I took an all day hike up to Whitewater Glacier last summer , and I needed something light (even though my forest-fire fighting brother carried the pack, lucky me!) which would allow me to capture the place in a matter of minutes- I wanted to reach the saddle and we had to be back before dark.

So being in a gorgeous place that makes my heart joyous, I knew I’d want to set something to paper, but wouldn’t have much time.

So I brought a set of oil pastels, because they lay down colour quickly, and a sketchbook. I laid in the watercolour washes when I got home. This is “Whitewater Glacier.”

Slocan Lake (top) was painted more Manet-style.

I brought:

Watercolours- but not a fishing box full of tiny tubes that I’d dig through; what a waste of time! I have a large white plastic palette with small squares along the side with my favorite colours already prepared The only mandatory one for my watercolour box is really Payne’s Grey. I don’t think there’s a better colour to mix with other blues to create great shades of sky.

A book of watercolor paper – if you’re outdoors, student grade watercolour paper is fine- you don’t have time layer washes like you might with more expensive Arches paper- although a thick, rich stack of watercolour paper is a delicious luxury for an artist . Here’s a handy guide to watercolour paper.

Brushes- I can get away with two. I like a flat brush and a round, extra-pointed brush. The flat brush will cover enough area for a small wash while allowing for calligraphic line quality- that twisting strand like streamers or grasses. The round brush holds plenty of water and the tip allows fine lines. I find this gives me a balance between capturing details without getting overwhelmed, while allowing for quickly laying down areas of paint.

Whatever you’re doing outside- keep it fresh. Make many paintings, not just one, so the spontaneous quality stays with you after you leave the fresh outdoors for forced air heating. And remember, you don’t need to know what your tools are called before you use them! I googled all the links I’m showing you- and I use these tools on a regular basis. Stop getting ready to get ready and just GO.

PS: I also have a painting bag- it has only my painting supplies. It removes one of the many obstacles I have in getting myself to do what I love.

I spent two days on the phone with Godaddy, trying to figure out how to what to do with this stuff Wordpress said I needed for this so-called “easy install”:

An access to your web server (via shell or FTP), A text editor, an FTP Client (if you need to install WordPress on a remote server), Your web browser of choice

This didn’t make a lot of sense to me. And if you purchase hosting and your domain name at Godaddy.com, you don’t need any of that.

I made this handy video, which walks you through the installation process that doesn’t require anything more than an internet connection. Click on the link to watch it now!

And that, my friends, is how Katanaville moved from Katanaville.Wordpress.com to Katanaville.com.

Taking a stroll through my Google Reader. Have you subscribed to Katanaville via RSS?

From I’m Painting As Fast as I Can Chris Beck tests what tape is awesome when used to mask a painting and then reviews five flavours of Daniel Smith watercolors.

Sandy Maudlin’s Art Journey takes on the challenge of a twenty minute painting, and the results range from Zen-like lovely to nothing special. Perfect results for an exercise in unfettered creativity.

Empty Easel has Dan posting a video tutorial on “How to See and Draw the Basic Shapes within Objects” – great for beginners, but if you know how to draw, don’t let yourself miss out by thinking, “I already know how to do that.” (I would have if I wasn’t writing this post and I learned something!)

Becci from Liberation BC’s Blog has posted some link love! Check it out

Making A Mark’s Katherine Tyrrell has an extensive resource for you to learn how to critique art. I would love everyone to know- as an artist, a good critique is valued more than naive comments, wouldn’t you agree?

Hope you find your way back here afterwards!

One of the things I would like to do over Christmas is make paper. At home we have two boxes of computer cartridge paper, printed mostly on both sides, of information that we don’t need. The Upstairs Family is undergoing a major revamp, and the newly organized and tidied place is looking swell. I want to do the same, and I know one of the ways to do it is by taking the boxes of paper and converting them to something useful.

Handmade paper makes drawings look so much better- a simple gesture, on nice paper, is more valued than the most exacting, perfect drawing on looseleaf. And sometimes, those exacting perfect precision drawings are not as compelling as those simple, relatable gestures.

Plus, good quality rag paper can be expensive. Why not make the story of artistic process start right at the materials?

Anyways, I found the most perfect tutorial on how to make paper, complete with instructions for every moment. There are no more complete instructions for how to make paper anywhere else on the internet.

I picked up a blender for $10 at the Thrift Store. I plan to use it solely for paper-making purposes, although some people on the wise and universally trusted Internets seem to think it’s okay to use it for food & paper if its run through the dishwasher.

I will be making my paper out of sketchbooks, copies of the Georgia Strait, and computer paper. I am keeping my eye open for other materials to include. I’m really interested in making some kind of grayscale paper series. I think that would be nice.

Because I like to be really sure of what I’m doing beforehand, and you may as well, I’ve included links to all the tutorials I’ve looked at and found helpful. It’s handy to look at all the variations and possibilities and to keep an open mind- when one set of directions is given, its’ canon,

when more sets of directions, there’s OPTIONS.

How to Make Paper out of Lint

How to Make Paper that Grows

How to Make Home made Paper -The Basics

Will you do this?

And how do you like my Christmas pun?  I’ve got two interviews to post over the next two weeks: one with the artist who brings the RAWR to acrylics, and another with an animal-rights illustrator- turkeys thank HER at Thanksgiving! Look forward to it!

One of the joys of the internet, for voracious bookworms short on pennies, is finding a gold mine of knowledge! The latest vein I’ve tapped is here- I basically find a small thing I don’t know about and then google about it until I do know something about it.

Start: jezebel’s coverage of Detail’s problematic “Hot Jewess” photo shoot.

from there I read the comments, and then find out about Hamsas from Wikipedia. Then a Google Image search to find out about Hamsa tattoos:

That leads to clicking on a photo, which redirects me to this cool page of Found Shit which does not have the image of the Hamsa tattoo I liked- I like how the hand curves up around the torso, and the way the fingers are arranged- its a nice composition. I’m a little curious as to how the wrist ends- I hope it’s not just an amutated straight line….

And then flipping through this blog of Found Shit, there is this photograph: Which is rather beautiful, by Photographer Philippe Ramette,  and brings us back around full circle to this being an art blog.

This is a super handy tutorial about how to sell things very simply through paypal. I haven’t tried it, but I also am contemplating adding a selling page onto Katanaville.com so that one may purchase Katana-style Christmas cards, and postcards, and other assorted Katana-produced items. My abstract-canvas belt that I wear has been remarked on often as “saleable.” What do you think? Do you want one?

Katanaville Belt

Anyways, I intend to be earning some kind of revenue, or exporting-Katana-art function out of this site in the future, and I hope that you are as well.

How to set up an E-commerce Site Using PayPal to Process

And if you’re into tutorials, you could also try this tutorial for Flakey Pie Crust. Nobody beats my mom at this but I dare you to try. Send me the results, I will be happy to judge your pie.

Get it? Draw you in? Oh I am hilarious.

The process of sketchbook to Bristol board to finished work in Skyler Luke Punnett’s work is awesome. He’s in my narrative drawing class and did a presentation of his work today. He showed us finished works, some sketches he’s working on, and explained the process. His style at times reminds me of Al Hartley (minus the odd Christian themes), snowboard graphics from companies like Volcom, and fairy tales. He is great at creating a story within a composition and clever combination, like this Heart Beet shirt below.  (Get it? HeartBeat? Beet!!)

The example he used is a beautiful sketch for a CD cover. He’s also working on a painting. That is a good thing to note as well- multiple iterations almost guarentee a quality finished product.

So the drawing is Cole Blue Pencil. I may have the name of that pencil wrong because Google isn’t bringing up any results. However, I plan to go to Opus (the local art supply shop) and ask. It’s a blue pencil that erases nicely, on Bristol board.

He also does a layer of watercolour wash seperately, and combines it digitally, working at either his home studio or the other one (not-at-home) for messy things.

Then the finished product goes to say, Shane Koyczan for a book cover. Koyczan is a pretty excellent Spoken Word poet (you might get to see at a Poetry Slam at Cafe du Soleil on Commercial Drive, Vancouver, if you’re lucky). However, my appreciation for Slam is not something I can go on about at length. It’s more like some people’s critique of art “Like it” or “Don’t like it.” Perfectly valid, but not much for conversation.

Remember the Underwater Photography Classes I’m marketing with the fantastic Josan Pinon as teacher? Registration is NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE! I’m going to show you how to make an online sales page yourself!

You need three basic things:

• a Product. (In this case, Underwater Photography Classes) It could be anything from Kazoos to Party Tickets.
• a PayPal account. (which requires an email address, and a bank account.)
• a Website (wordpress.com does not work, I used KatanaBarnett.com. If you have troubles with this, perhaps another tutorial is in order)
• Your press release (how-to is right here).
• A Great Satisfaction Guarantee (from The Art of Nonconformity)

Did you notice that we don’t have dates or locations yet? We want to be flexible with the needs of attendees, and our budget will depend on the number of interested people. To avoid raising any capitol, we’re selling the events before we pay for them. That would be leverage, which is one of the biggest tools we have.

Make a new page on your website. This is where you’re going to send people to register. They’ll read your description, and find out if they are the right people for what you’re offering. Keep it fairly simple, without a lot of distractions. I chose red for my headline because it’s attention-getting. The description is just the press release over again, and one of Josan’s photographs- the kinds of results we want to teach our students.

Than the guarantee, which should be honest (no refund of $1000 doll-hairs) and do-able. You can’t send dissatisfied customers on all-expenses paid trips, unfortunately.

Then, at the bottom, the ‘alter-call’ or the ‘call to action.’ If you have what they want, this is where you put your PayPal Button. This is a code that you copy and paste from PayPal.

Merchant Services -> Buy Now Button -> Create Button

Than you paste this at the bottom of your page.

Now you just have to make sure everything formatted nicely, and there you have it, easier than a point-and-shoot camera

I had just moved in, meeting my neighbour (@garfieldherriot)- and I am explaining what it is that I do.

“I’m an art student at Emily Carr University.” Quite the elevator pitch, no?

This is usually enough- “Oh cool! You do art!” or “I hear that’s a really hard school to get into.”  Of the latter, I have no idea- I dropped off my portfolio on the last possible day, scared of a rejection I didn’t get.  Enough of a reaction to feel good about myself.

“So what are you doing to be an artist?”

I repeat myself. “Uh…going to art school. And then hopefully something afterwards. You never know.”

“Well what do you want to do?”

“Be an artist. I’d like to be in the Vancouver Art Gallery.”

“How do you do that?”

This is when I start to feel like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Oh my god, he just found out I’m not a real artist. “I don’t know?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

So I found myself at the Vancouver Art Gallery the next day, asking someone who didn’t want to talk to me how to apply. I learned they schedule three years in advance, and you need a resume. Art shows.

I get home, and am rewarded with ice cream. Than I have to go to work at my mundane security guard job. Yay.

LESS THAN A YEAR LATER I WAS PUTTING ON MY OWN ART SHOW

So I made my press release a few days ago and now it’s time to show it to you!

First I made a list of words relating to the subject, keywords, if you want to get all technical. “Underwater, photography, lessons, techniques, photos, photographer…” etc.

Next comes the title: a little catchy, a little cheesy, but most importantly, it tells you what it is, includes a few major keywords. “Get your feet wet with Underwater Photography in Vancouver.”

Then a few sentences to describe what it is, giving just enough information to intrigue. “Award winning photographer..” and “a limited number of people will have the chance to learn…” Notice the “limited number of people”- this adds value. You could also say, “space is limited” or “limited time only.” You’ve seen this before, but were you aware of what it does?

And then a list of what the benefits are, what the audience will get out of it. What are they going to learn? What’s in it for me? This also gives you the moment to narrow down your audience. I don’t want people thinking they’ve signed up for bowling lessons!

And then tell them what to do next! They want it, now what do they do? REGISTER!

Final Result:
Get Your Feet Wet with Underwater Photography in Vancouver

Award-winning fine art photographer Josan Pinon reveals the specialized techniques of underwater photography that she has used to create beautiful underwater images and portraits.

How to take photographs underwater
How to handle the variables of water and equipment
How to maximize available light
How to set up composition & poses underwater
A completed portfolio of underwater photographs