NWBA have managed to start meeting in person recently. Which meant that we could get together all the bits for out collaborative book on Magellan's journey. So for the past couple of weeks I've been pinning bits together and doing more monoprints of sea.
But this has given me 12 sets of dragon pieces for a slot and tab structure.
I finally finished my edition of prints for the Hot Bed Press 20:20 print exchange.
It must be more than a year since I made my last etching and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the process of getting the image onto the plate.
The drawing
I wanted to make something out of the blackberry monoprints but I didn’t want to cut them up just yet.So I scanned the best of the 4 layered prints and used it to make double sided digital prints to make a flag book.
Studies from the bramble hedge at the allotment. Drypoint and monoprint. Tony says I've spent the day reinventing wallpaper!
I’ve not managing to do much recently, a combination of stupidly hot weather (for the north of England) and an allotment that needed cropping and watering.
But I have managed a couple of single sheet books
The first was a trial for a workshop that I’ll be giving in the New Year.
I’ve been struggling for inspiration lately. I went on the web to look for ideas for overcoming artists block and found all sorts of drawing and painting exercises. A lot came with a time commitment, a drawing a day type thing, but I know from past experience that these will go the way of keeping a sketchbook, started with enthusiasm and then fizzle.
I also found sites offering packs of cards that have prompt words on , the idea being that you deal out a certain number and work to these. I always work best to a project or brief so these looked like a better fit.
Then I thought a book artist ought to have these prompts in
book form. So I’ve spent the past three or four weeks making the ‘Inspirator
for Book Artists’
I decided to make volvelles (turning discs) to show the chosen words.
For making books I decided that there two categories of words that needed choosing, technical things like text, image, structure also more creative prompts. I also decided I needed a number generator. I thought about using a die but decided that a volvelle worked better , I didn’t need to work out how to incorporate it into the structure.
The first mock up looked like this. The discs slotted into an adapted crown binding
Now it is made I need to use it
I used the ‘rules’ to dial up some words. Now I just have to make it happen
The theme for NWBA this month was ‘Puzzle’ and the theme for PAS was ‘Inspired by...’
I was struggling with both but while I was watching a repeat of Jonathon Creek I saw him fiddling with a magic box and thought you could put a book in that and it grew.
I thought this worked
well with the idea of the turn of the century (19th)travelling show
sideshows and circuses . I found copyright
free images of clown from around this era and made cartes de visite with the
clowns on them (very often photographers produced these cards with celebrities
of the day as a money making exercise) to use instead of the number side of my
playing card inserts. These are all men.
