Modul 4 Chapters 7 & 8

Chapter 7
Book Art

I love making books and book covers.  When I go on holiday I take a notebook with me to write down all the places I visit and things that happen because I forget them all so easily when I get home.  I then make a wrap around cover for the books  and they hold all the maps, tickets etc. as well and I love looking back through them.
I have been on two book making classes with Frances Pickering and have both her books along with two other books that I regularly consult when making a book.

From Frances first workshop I made two books,

The top one I did at the workshop.  I went to Egypt and was fascinated by the various gods and godesses so I made my book about them so that I wouldn't forget the stories.  The second book i made at home and was made to hold my mother's twenty first birthday cards.  As she was 21 in 1944 the cards are all quite small so as not to waste paper and they all fitted into a small book.  Every other page has a pocket to hold a card and the facing page has a photograph of her.

At the second workshop we made a fabric book.  I have never finished this one although I do keep working on pages.  We had to make the pages first and then decorate them.  Frances is a wonderful artist and can easily draw and paint onto fabric and then bondaweb the pieces into her books.  I found this difficult and therefore I find it hard to fill the book.  The subject I chose was water, part of and 'Elements' theme I was working on.  The other little book in the picture is another unfinished one although the pages are drawn up, they just need painting and finishing off.

My friend who has a blog had posted the website Page Paper Stitch on her list of favourites and it is amazing.  Annwyn Dean, Joan Newall and Elizabeth Shorrock have some wonderful books they have made.  They regularly exhibit at book fairs in Leeds so I will have to try and get there one day.

I also looked closely at these pictures on the internet.  Some of the altered books are amazing but some are much more achievable and therefore more interesting to me.

Thought you might like to see my holiday folders as well though they are not strictly books.

I am adding in here a book I have recently made with my textile group.  One of the members went on a workshop and passed on to us what she learnt and we all made this wonderful paper.

Chapter 8
Developing your drawings

Back to my little goldfinch.

I have only washed half the page on these as I was interested to make a note of the difference it made. The first page, I forgot that the pages underneath were uneven and so the printing has not come out very well.  However, I liked the unevenness of the print, it looked almost like a black and white photograph and the birds do appear to have feathers and different coloured patches.  The second page I have printed flat and the birds are more solid and uniform.

This printing block has the bird shape cut and seperated to make seperate areas on the bird to look like different coloured patches.  The first prints I tried to colour seperately but that is quite difficult to keep up.

I have a thermofax screen of seedheads and as goldfinches love seeds I thought it appropriate to add these to the picture.  I have kept the birds in two tone colours and I quite like these.

Here I have painted the birds in single colours and printed them randomly.

This is just using up left over paint.  I think this might be useful for my final book.

Here I made another printing block from the picture above.  I traced off a design from the two birds on the right that are back to back.  I used a spray paint on the finished printing.

This is the blue flower that I drew earlier.  I had run out of funky foam so I made a glue print.  It is quite delicate, I don't know if I shall use it again or if it might be better as a more solid print.

I quite enjoy printing but never seem to be organised enough to have plenty of paper handy or the right sort of paper.  However, it does mean that I now use printing as a way of starting stitch projects and trying to design new pieces of stitch work.