Holes

After deciding that the bookworm book was the wrong size for the parameters of the ‘Holes’ swop (Artist Books 3.0) I decided to revisit family photographs again.

When looking through old photos we usually can recognise Aunty Jean or Cousin Fred but often in a group there is someone who nobody can identify. I decided to use this idea of missing identity and take it further by taking the anonymous person out of the image altogether leaving a hole where they had been.

The images are all presented in scans of different sized photoframes.

This frame theme continues on the front and the back of the book

Repurposed letters

I started to clear out my workspace and got sidetracked by the cut out letter forms left over from the book I made for the first ALAW alphabet.

I thought they'd make a good collagraph plate but I was experimenting with water soluble ink and I think that the paper was too wet.

 Its a shame that I remembered to reverse the letters because I think I prefer the block

Finishing off

It’s been a week of finishing things off. The prints for Lesley’s exchange have now reached their destinations. Here is my contribution.  It is an etching. The plate is aluminium etched in copper sulphate using a mixture of traditional and ‘green’ grounds.

It looks a bit drab next to the colour of all the others. (Gina has posted the full set on her blog.)

I’ve also finished the first alphabet for ALAW. I’ve used a simple Japanese stab binding to hold the pages together.

February Cut Outs

Just a quick extra post - February's letters for ALAW
On White

And showing through

First letters made

I’ve decided to make more of these these small abstracts ending up with a a series of 26 which will cycle through a limited colour palette of deep violet, Prussian blue, phthalo green and white.

I’m going to scan and print them in pairs and I’ll cut the letters out of the squares so that when they are finally bound together the texture of the page behind will show through.

So far I’ve done 4!

Starting a new project

At the moment I'm experimenting, trying to work out a starting point for ALAW.

Playing with letter forms,

with structure,

and with text.

I like the textures that I'm generating using the computer but I'm concerned about copyright on some of the quotations that I originally thought of using. I think I'll leave the peace alphabet until later in the year and begin with a simpler, hand rendered one.