1,2,3

The big books are awesome!

Electric Blue ~ 8/20/09

Willie's moleskine - The Movie!

Click me!

Checking the status of books.

Round 1: Who has received their books back? As far as I can tell from looking back at posts it is, Mary, John and Mike. Is that it? If you have gotten your back and I am not aware, please let me know. If you still have books to work in, please wrap them up and pass them on to their owner. PLEASE!

Round 2: Who has their new books in hand ready to go? Myself, Ash, Heidi, Aya, Ballookey and Mary, right? Please let us know with a post when you have your new book.

Thanks y'all!

ID Pages in Andrea's new Moly

If y'all wouldn't mind adding a form of identification in the front of my book when you get it, I would appreciate it. I drew a version of my drivers license, but if you aren't comfortable with that you can put whatever you want in your little rectangle, okee dokee?

Aya Rosen - All Done! (for now)

Finished my pages yesterday, I liked doing the "half" page and really curious to see what the next person, which is going to be Anders Pearson form NYC (my book is basically going across town...) will do with it.
I'm going to make some cool thing to put in the pocket next, I have a couple of idea, now I just need to choose one.

First work, round 2

1)the flyleaf page, with muskrat skull, "Six Views", pen and ink,
water color, colored pencil
2)page 1, "through the trellis", water color, gouache, oils
3)page 3, "Bird Woman in the Treetops" or, "The Blue-footed booby"
4)the pocket (stickers from Andrea).

Final Stuff

This is my last installment and Willie's book is finally on the way to him.

The last hurrah (Mike's book is finally on it's way. Sigh.)

Things I notice at the museum.


Roach with cityscape.


Remote control issues.


Hoping for a happy ending.


The end?

Not Exactly artist trading cards

I have done some work in my new mole, but I made the mistake of using
a medium that it very slow to dry, so I can't scan it. Nor can I do
any new work, because I can't turn the page until it dries.

Meanwhile, I made some wallet-sized prints of two pieces i did in my
old mole. Since they are in my own mole, the one returned from the
last group, no one else has them. So I am putting them in the POCKET
of my NEW mole, for you guys when the mole comes around to you. There are 12+ of each, one for each of you. I also put in some other things, weird stickers and stuff, which you can help yourselves to. (I know some of you like stickers.)

You can put them in the pocket of your new mole, or your old one, or
paste them in, or shoot darts at them, or send them to your high
school English teacher, or whatever you want.

The reason I'm posting this is to remind you to remember to LOOK in my pocket when it reaches you.

Greetings from the Great White North

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to do a quick introduction of myself. My name is Ash Edwards and I'm a motion designer & illustrator living in Toronto, Ontario Canada. I mostly illustrate with pen and markers but will draw/paint with pretty much anything. I also do some sculpting on occasion. Some of my pieces can be found on my flickr page here. Below are a few samples…



I have a nerdy love of typography, comics and film. When I'm not nerding out I can be found cruising around the city on my bike or playing soccer.

Really excited to get going on the exchange. Thanks again Andrea for inviting me to participate!

Johnnynorms' book

My very good friend (and music collaborator), Melissa, has added a couple of pieces in my round 1 moley:

The one above is "Time out" (note the Mike Kline kind of sky!), below is entitled "Daniel". Still a few pages to go - i'll let you all know what happens on them.

Aya Rosen - Pages 2 and 3

So I have quite a few deadlines and orders and a lot of stuff to do any yet, I keep working on the one project which deadline is in a month and a bit - I guess once started I do want to finish and take it off my plate.

I'm so happy with how this spared came out! It was challenging in a lot of different ways.



Also, I made the moleskin a bag so it doesn't get all messed up in it's future travels...

And so it begins...

I am still fascinated by the mosiac sculpture of Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden. The skulls amid mirrors (tinfoil, here) is her influence. To see Niki's pillar of skulls, follow the link, click Videos, view the 3rd video listed. The fish crow is all me.

Me & My Mole: Failure, then Success!

I'm jumping on the hi-tech bandwagon by trying to post 2 photos simultaneously... ooo, reckless. On top is me unsuccessfully diddling with the self-timer on my cam. Ironically, it did in fact show my mole & me. Below, I'm snapping my own mug at arm's reach, which was easier than futzing with the self-timer. My mole arrived Friday. Andrea, you can add me to the blog roll, as I'm definitely rolling... happy to meet you all!

Pencils Ready

Oh, ha ha, September 15th?! I was buckling down this weekend in case we were shipping August 15th. Whew. I can relax a little. Since this is my book there was something I wanted to try so I wouldn't mess up someone else's. This gives me enough time to do that.

Anyway, ready!

Round 2

There have been a few questions about round 2 and people are anxious to get started. Yay! Go ahead! Start your new books if you are ready. I know what I am going to do on my first page, I just have yet to start it. Here are answers to your recent questions.

We are doing a max of 5 pages in each others books. 4 of your own and 1-2 collaborative. If it's your book, do 4 and a half pages. When you receive someone elses book, complete 1/2 of the collaborative page they left for you, 4 of your own and another 1/2 page to collaborate with the next person. Does that make sense?

That number may be a little different if you are using the watercolor book, so count your pages and figure out how many each person can do. We have 12 participants.

Please everyone check in with a post when your A4 arrives. Once you post that you've got your book you'll be added to the Round 2 blog roll on the right. =)

Also, I wanted to encourage everyone to put a little something in the pocket of each Moly when you get it. I was a bit surprised from round 1, some of the pockets were empty when they came around to me. I'd like everyone to make use of those pockets, get creative! Nothing to big or bulky, just something small.

Lastly, I'd like to make September 15th the first ship date for round 2 if that is okay with everyone. I know it is a ways off, but I still have two folks who I have yet to hear from. Ash Edwards has yet to respond to her blog administrator email and Willie B. has yet to decide. I will try and get both of them up to confirm and commit as soon as I can. Once I hear from them I'll email all of you the mailing order.

Sound good?

~fin~

hello kitty cold call message pads (felt pens)


john bolton moustache game (micron & felt pens, card, masking tape & found watercolour set)


yogabotics (micron pen & polychromos pencils)


bonding (caran d'ache neocolor crayons)


just who is thelma ritter? (graphite)

I guess this is my last post! I hope the next round will be as fun as this one has. I shall be watching you!

still working on the old Mole

I am eager to start on the new mole, but I'm still working on the last
pages of the old mole.

Aya Rosen - First page

Hay Everyone!
Just wanted to introduce myself, say hello to everyone and check to see if I got this whole thing right.

My name is Aya, I'm 34 years old (aggg...this is the first time I'm writing this, my birthday was yesterday) I live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband Ned and mostly making art those days. I have a pretty successful Etsy store, and I do a lot of photography with Ned who's a fashion photographer and draw all the time, really, all the time!

I used to do all of my art in sketchbooks till a couple of years back, but I still do a lot of sketchbook drawings and painting and I really like the idea of this awesome collaborative effort.



I just got the A4 moleskin for the exchange, I did get the watercolor paper, in my opinion the pages could have been a little thicker, but aside of that, I'm pretty happy. I use their 9"X6" watercolor sketchbooks, so it's pretty much the same.
Most of my drawings those days are very small - around 7"X5" or 9"X6", so suddenly, having to fill a whole A4 page feels very scary - it just feels huge! I decided to just plunge in or it'll get too frightening.

So I just finished the first page, half of it was done on a sushi restaurant on union square on Thursday, and half yesterday at Blackbird parlor, my favorite drawings place to draw in the summer (in the winter it gets dark too early and they don't have the best of lights).



I'm trying to still figure out how this is going to go on, at first I thought that the best thing to do would be to scattered the pages over the whole book, but now I'm thinking about doing consecutive pages. Also, I'm not quite sure if there is a page limit, and if there was any decision about the half filled pages for a collaborative page between two artists?

This is a test of the beginner posting system...

This is only a test. Had this been a real blog post, there would have been a photo of my art. But there's not. Because jeepers, I oughta see if I can post anything at ALL, before trying to upload a photo. This concludes this test of my posting ability.

The inside cover of my new, round 2 A4!!!

I spent some time with the new A4 this past weekend and I love it! The inside cover page = the only one I can SHARPIE up without worrying about the bleed through.

Collabs - how we wanna do it?

Hey all! My First Post!

Andrea invited me to post an entry asking how we might want to handle the collaboration issue I brought up in the comments. In a nut here's the issue:

We're invited to draw on five pages of each Mole and collaborate with the previous artist on the last of their drawings.

If someone's last page is a Left Hand page, then would I (1) add to their drawing ON the LH page or would I (2) contain myself to the RH page?

Option 1: No problem. Just add right onto what exists, and then draw on five more pages. So each artist has four exclusive pages and two collaborative pages—one with the artist that came before and one to be completed by the artist that comes after.

Option 2: Initially the idea was that the collaboration would be on a separate page, but every other artist's work will end on a RH page, so the collaborator would be working on the back side of that page which isn't terribly collaborative.

So how would we like it done?

Theoretically, we could ask each person to initiate their Mole with five pages, then we could each do six pages within - this would ensure that each artist ends on a LH page, leaving a RH page for the next person to get started and collaborate. However this wouldn't work out for people choosing to use the 60-page watercolor Moles and it would add to the work. It sounds to me that the seven pages of last time was a bit much for some to complete, and six isn't much of a break.

I personally wouldn't have any problem with collaborations taking place on the same page as the last person's art (Option 2). It challenges the artist to leave space but launch an idea, and challenges the next artist to use the space and explore the idea. Also, it sticks to the same page count commitment, shouldn't over-extend the watercolor books, and would be really interesting.

I'm hoping some folks weigh in with how they feel about it and throw out some ideas.

Here's a few collabs from Flickr to inspire. Ours might be more wild because of the diversity of styles:

Update

Ian has decided not to join us for round 2. :(

We are still holding out hope for Mr. Willie B.

I am replacing Ian with Ashley Edwards: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27671188@N00/

Getting closer ...

Moley arrival A4 and the large one

The one on top is the A4 and the one under is the larger one. They
are both watercolor moles and have 60 pages (30 sheets) of a thickish,
textured WHITE paper. I was very excited to get them in the mail from
Amazon and I want to begin working immediately! I really want to try
them. I do have a small water color mole which I've already used.

The pens are from Andrea, thank you so much Andrea.