Module 4 Chapter 10 part 2

Altered Book

I have finally finished my altered book.  I found it hard going but I am reasonably pleased with the result.  It isn't maybe as imaginative as some of the ones you see online but I have put a few techniques I have learned to the test.

The end papers in the book were both the same.  A very delicate sepia print of thistles.  Rather than spoil the print I decided to paint the grasses using acrylic paint.

I feel that this has lifted the page.  The back end papers are the same.

Next came the title page for Spring.

The background was a piece of paper I did some time ago when I wanted to practice using markel sticks and a stencil.  For some reason I only did a short piece of paper, perhaps I didn't think I would need to fill a double page spread.  I came across this photograph of the gardens in Holland while a was looking through a magazine.  I didn't want to cover my printed work but I wanted to put the whole photograph in because it was so good.  The letters for Spring were produced using wordart.

This was the last page that I did.  I really felt you couldn't have spring without Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' but I really struggled with how to present them.  I found this simple sketch of a daffodil on the internet, so using my markel stick and stencil technique for the background I then drew little daffodils all over it.  The photograph is of the wild daffodils at Farndale on the Yorkshire Moors.  The line from the poem is printed on the computer using a hand made paper.

I liked this picture of the lambs and it tied in with the picture of sheep I used in the winter section.  I needed to brighten the page with the picture and also to cover the page of poems as I wasn't keep on either of them.  There are several nursery rhymes about lambs and I chose the most well known.  The background is green tissue paper and I found the images of lambs, Mary and Little Bo Peep on the internet.  It is amazing what comes up when you google little bo peep!  The flowers are from a pack of assorted paper cut outs that I was given at Christmas and the writing is done with a silver pen.  I still felt that the picture page needed something else so I have done 2 rows of stitching round the edge.

The two rows of stitching from the previous page show through on this page so I have threaded another thread through them to make a stronger border for this page of poems.  My Thrush is borrowed from Frances Pickering who has a lovely drawing in one of her books that I copied.  The nest is woven strips of paper from a colour magazine with eggs cut from a similar source.  The poem above the nest is to cover the printed poem on that page and it is printed on the computer using a hand made paper.  I cut around the top edge of the bird so that you can just see the next page.

On this page you can just see the blue stitching from the previous page.  This is cherry blossom from torn tissue paper in various shades and a little bit of red cellophane.  All the cherry blossom round my way is pink but the poem suggests it is white which I didn't realise until I had done the work.

I wanted this page to be really bright and colourful for summer.  I have painted a bright background with various flowers and the little blue tit.  I have also added some cut out flowers and a butterfly to give a three D effect.  The lettering is done on WordArt and cut out.

Although the book was about the English countryside and there was not a picture or poem about the seaside, as I live by the sea I felt I had to put a page in about it.  So here we have shells and boats and ice cream all traced or copied from books that I have.  The bikini is a piece of yellow fabric with acrylic paint dots.  The words are from songs and a poem.

Roses are the flower of summer and I didn't feel I could draw the full blown garden rose so here are some wild roses.  I am sure that is what Robbie Burns would have seen.  The page had some poems about bees and I particularly liked one of them but didn't want to reprint it so I have outlined it over the paint and it is quite readable like that.  This page was gessoed and then painted but I found that the gesso sticks together when you close the book so I have to keep a piece of tissue paper in this page.  I didn't use the gesso again after this problem.

I quite liked the butterfly poem and the picture so to brighten it up I cut these butterflies from coloured magazine paper.  The ones with two colours are supposed to be lifted from the page, they are only stuck in the middle, but they have got flattened with closing the book.  It still looked a bit boring so I added some more yellow flowers.

Here are the goldfinches.  I used my stamp and did the different colours.  I accidently printed the one on the end the wrong way up so I had to paint a bent stalk for him to stand on.

Summer isn't summer without cricket.  I painted the background with Kooh-i-Nor paints over gesso and used a stamp for the bats.  I left it out to dry in the living room near the window and the sun completely faded the paint on one side. I decided to leave it as it was as I didn't think I could paint round the bats without making a mess.  The picture is from the internet and the red tape stitched with white thread represents the cricket ball.

I made a new cover for the book using off cuts from the pages I had made.  I pasted the pieces to pelmet vilene and glazed it with Mod Podge to secure all the joins and give it quite a shine.

So here is my book.

I found this piece of transfer printing I had done some time ago and I felt it represented what I had done in this module so I used it to cover the front of my sketchbook.

I found this the hardest module so far.  I don't think I will ever alter a book again.  I don't like damaging books and I found it difficult to decide which pages to remove, what to keep and then what to produce.  I think I prefer making a book from start to finish but I still find that I make them very pictorial.

Module 4 Chapter 10 part 1

An altered book.

As you can see from chapter 9, I have chosen to alter a book that is based around the four seasons with paintings and poems that reflect the different times of the year.  I started in the middle of Autumn with a page I knew I wanted to keep.  I have now completed Autumn and Winter so I am posting these two now as the whole book will be about 24 pages long and it will make a very big blog.

I have divided the book into sections with a title page for each season.

/This page is printed on firm paper which has been stuck into the book.  It is based on a transfer print that I did onto fabric using leaves that I found in the woods.  I painted the whole page in the bright colours first using Koh-i-nor paints and then place the leaves on top and painted round them with a sponge a darker Koh-i-nor colour.  The lettering is computer printed letters cut out.

This follows on from the title page as the first line of the poem by Keats.  I have linked them together with little dots but they are not very clear on the title page.  This page has a wash of watercolour and fruits painted with water soluble pencils.  This again is a thicker paper that I have pasted into the book.  I have a Koh-i-nor white paint that has a slight sparkle and I have used this over the background to try and create a mist effect.

For some reason it was the cart and not the wheat field that reminded me of the hymn 'Come ye thankful people come'.  I had removed the picture of the wheat field but decided to reinstate it by gluing it to the back of the previous page.  The little plaits are made from cocos fibres as I didn't have any wheat. I have shaped the edge of the next page so you get a yellow scallop showing on this page.

Chrysanthemums are so reminiscent of autumn that I had to include them.  This page is all acrylic paint and I have used two coats of gesso onto the original book pages to try and cover what was printed there.  It doesn't quite cover it so you get a hazy view on one page and two poems about snails showing through the other page.  I managed to find a chinese proverb and part of a chinese poem about chrysanthemums.

As I said in my last post, the fox was the one poem I really wanted to keep so I washed the page with Koh-i-nor paint and decorated it with the gander's feathers. The fox is done on a seperate piece of paper glued in.  I used a mixture of water soluble pencils and watercolour paint.  The little bits of gold are from a jar of gilding flakes and it took ages to try and separate out the gold pieces.

I caught myself singing this song one day and decided it would make a good page for my book.  The background is acrylic paint and the window frame, curtains and leaves are cut from magazines.  I didn't know what to do then with the next page and I wanted a double page for the start of Winter so I stitched these two pages together to form a pock and I keep the leaves I collected in the pocket.

I've made a fold-out page for the introduction to winter.  The background is water soluble pencils.  There are some trees made from a stencil and there are some more that, along with the animals, are cut out from Christmas cards.  The first part of the paper is glued into the book but when you turn over the second and third parts you get the poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

This picture was painted into the book by using two coats of gesso to cover the paper and then painting over with acrylic ink.  Because the paint is dark, the picture underneath does not show through.  

I liked both the poem and the painting on this page so didn't want to do too much to it.  I have reprinted the poem on a handmade paper which looks a bit like sheep footprints going across it.  I have stitched into the next page so it shows through on this side as well and does finish off the picture.

Shakespeare.  The background of these two pages are photographs of a frosted window pane in my garage taken quite a while ago.  The page on the right is a zoomed in print.  I have collaged the paper to create more of a pattern and attached crystal organza 'icicles' with the stitching around the edge.

You couldn't have winter without Winnie the Pooh.  This picture is copied from my daughters book.  Unfortunately, Christopher Robin looks more like an old man than a young boy but my trial drawing in my sketchbook was much better.  This is done on a separate piece of paper glued in and is drawn with soluble pencil.  I haven't continued the stitching onto the right hand page as this is the end of the book and I haven't quite decided what to do with the front pieces.

That has taken me quite a while to write so I am glad I decided to publish this in two halves.  The next sections are spring and summer and the cover.  I am more and more pleased with it the more of it I do.  I still don't think I will ever alter another book.  I have put the torn out pages to one side and they will go into the back of the book when I have finished.

Module 4 Chapter 9/10

Preparing my book.

I wasn't sure where to start on this one.  I have never defaced a book before beyond turning the corners down and I found it difficult to start but once I had torn the first page out then it became a bit easier.
Working out the order of work was difficult. Do I begin at the beginning and go on to the end or start in the middle or what, also, what it my book about?  The book in question was rescued from the library who were going to destroy it as no one had taken it out for a long time.  It is a series of poems and paintings on the English landscape through the seasons.

The layout is a poem on the left hand side and a picture on the right.

I wasn't keen on many of the poems and some of the pictures were very bland and not all of them seemed to tie in with the poems.  One of these was a poem I particularly liked about a wicked fox but the picture was a line drawing of a sleeping fox cub which was very pretty but not appropriate.  I decided to start my book here, right in the middle making a picture to match the poem.

The poem is quite long so rather than write or type it out again, I decided to give the white page a wash of colour and then decorate it with the gander's feathers and the gold dripping from the pheasant.  I am not sure if you can see the words but basically he has raided the geese, carrying one in his top hat and carries the pheasant, dripping gold, home over his shoulder like a swag bag.  He has a gleaming fang and should be wearing a mask but I prefered to leave well alone as he is already a bit of a funny shape for a fox.

I am now about half way through the book.  Autumn and winter are finished and summer is started.  I have decorated some papers from paint leftovers and stamps that I have made, all ready to be put in when I reach the right page.  Now I have got going it is a bit easier.  I am replacing the poems in the book with ones that I like and maybe only using a few lines or words from them.  I am also using songs and sayings to make a more varied content.

These are some of the papers I have made so far.  Hope to have the book finished soon.

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.

Module 4 Chapter 6

Raising the Surface

While doing this chapter I did return to the previous one,  Firstly I had been to York and to the art shop and bought some more watercolour pencils and returned to the picture of the fence and added some more colour to the woodwork.  I also had a go at drawing the kingfisher I had seen, so here are the results.

There is more brown in the fencing which gives some more detail to it.

I felt I had at least got the shape of the bird right.  I was copying it from a bird book.  The background was from my own imagination combined with what I could remember the river bank looked like that is near my house.  I think I should have left the bird on the white page, he looked much better then.

On to chapter 6.

I got the feel of this chapter by doing the recommended pages in the booklet.

This is just triangles cut into the page and lifted up to create shadows.

Here I cut slots into the paper and threaded through strips of tissue paper.  Some of the strips were quite bulky while others were folded flat.

Here I have stitched into the page with a thick thread.  The red dots are bleeding through from the next page but look quite interesting.  I think the yellow tinge to the pages must be shadow as they are definitely white in the book.

I decided to look through my old stamps and found this letter A from module 2.  I stamped the turquoise letters around the page then cut them out.  I have then placed a coloured page from a magazine underneath the cutouts.  I have then glued the cutouts to the page but just sticking half the shape down, leaving the other half standing out from the paper.  I didn't want to make a regimented design so I put the one on the left at an angle but it might have been better if it had been straight.

This is an accidental piece.  I needed a stencil of  a tree for just a couple of prints so I cut this one out in some thick paper from a magazine.  When I had used it I left it to dry and when I went back, all the cut out edges had curled up.  I painted the reverse of the stitched page in red and then pasted my curled up tree onto it.  It looks very dramatic and I like the bit of print round the outside.

This was one of those ideas that come in the middle of the night.  I drew lines down the page approximately 1/4inch apart and cut away the alternate strips so that they were just attached at the top.  I then curled them with the edge of the scissors and got this lovely effect.  However, it only stays like this while it is free from being squashed in a book.  So I put it back into my book and squashed it down.

I think it still looks interesting and the kingfisher is on the other side showing through quite nicely.  I have wondered how well it would work with newspaper stuck on the back before cutting the strips.  They may not curl as well and I don't think that as much of it would show through as I first thought.

I have been reading through this and I am sure this is putting full stops where I type commas unless it is the print on my screen.

Module 4 chapter 5

Drawing in Colour.

I had spotted this chapter when I first got this module downloaded and was a bit worried about it but took a deep breath and made a start.  I have some watercolour pencils that I bought over a period of time so the colour selection is a bit random and I didn't always have the one I needed.  I had never really used them to paint a picture, I just used them for colouring in bits and pieces.

My first attempt is the Christmas poinsettia.

I have drawn the view from my chair and it is a reasonable interpretation.  I found the pencils blended really well and was able to achieve most of the colours I wanted.  I used one of the water brushes where you put water into the handle and it drips through the brush when you squeeze it.  I have two of these and the finer brush worked very well on this, releasing hardly any water and therefore the paint seemed to come out more textured.  I listed the crayons I had used at the top as I have got several reds.

I then drew the poinsettia from above looking down onto the red bracts.

This also worked quite well apart from the red leaf on the far left which should have been green.

I then moved on to my goldfinch.

I have used this picture quite a lot and I feel he will have to find a place in my final book.  I didn't have a black crayon so used a felt tip pen.  It's a bit risky as it runs if you get water on it but it doesn't look too bad.

I then decided I should have a look at another of my original drawings and chose this fence.

The yellow I have got isn't quite the right shade but otherwise I am reasonable please with this one.  I felt I needed to have a go at background and filling the page.  I had recently been to an art demonstration where the artist did a river bank with reeds and grasses.  He must have used about ten different shades of green and brown all mixed from a couple of colours but his technique of going over and over the same area drawing grass really worked.  I haven't done as much depth as he does but I think I have made a fair go at it.

Really please with myself for achieving a decent attempt at this chapter.  I feel confident enough to try something else so I am looking through photographs and books to see what else I can do.

Module 4 Chapter 4

Scraffito

Before I started on this chapter I had a look at the artists you recommended.  My favourite was Heeseop Yoon and I have chosen this picture to keep in my sketchbook.

This is produced using black tape wound round the pillars and stuck to the walls.  I think the pillars are her own and I assume the tape is actually stuck to a background and then attached to the walls, otherwise, it could get messy.

I have also been back to my original drawing of the goldfinch and have photocopied the one I put tone into and have now added some texture.  At least I think that is what it looks like.

I don't know if you can see it very well but it does look sharper than the original.  I used a drawing pen number 2 to add feathers and make the seed head spikier.

4.4.1.

I am not a lover of scraffito, I never feel it works very well for me.  However, I am quite pleased with some of these pieces.

This was my first try using oil pastels and gouache over the top.  The gouache scraped off fairly well and the colours came through OK.  The instructions say that dark over light colours works best so I had to have a go at the other way round.

I thought this worked really well.  Black and red oil pastel with white gouache over the top.  The white gouache scraped away really well so I was quite pleased with the result.  I washed the paper with Koh-i-Noor before doing anything else.

I was quite keen now so I prepared a page with oil pastel and black gouache to make a copy of one of my drawings from a previous chapter.

I didn't get back to this page for a couple of weeks and the gouache seemed to have dried hard and I found it quite difficult to scrape off.  The flash on the camera has made the blue light up and it looks really nice, in fact the whole page looks better here than in my book.

I then tried various other mediums to see how they worked.

I've used pencil crayon with inktense over, inktense with gouache, markel stick and gouache, oil pastel with oil pastel, oil pastel and acrylic, oil pastel and emulsion paint, inktense and acrylic, inktense and inktense, and water soluble crayon and acrylic.

'Greasier' mediums work best as the base colour, gouache and acrylic work best over the top.  Two oilier colours on top of each other tend to just blend together rather than scrape away.  I used a toothpick for all the scraping.

Finally I went back to my goldfinch and using inktense and acrylic I coloured in the outline drawing I had done earlier (photocopied).  I used inktense and acrylic paint and where the bird has black patches I used a dark green.

His colouring is a bit unusual for a goldfinch but I do quite like him.  I added the leg afterwards with a felt tip pen and did a light wash of green watercolour over the whole page.

As I said, this isn't my favourite medium but I am quite pleased with what I have achieved.  However, I don't know if I will ever use it but you never know, one day this effect might be just what I am looking for.