ArtiphyTheHeart

A Handbound Book, Start To Finish

Here's a pic of my latest book:

My friend and art partner Rita loves Canson mixed-media paper and in watching her work with it, I've noticed how well it takes wet media and glue without buckling.  It's also smooth and bright white which I like for most drawing and illustration work.  It holds its fibers and keeps them out of my Rapidograph, so it's the paper I chose for the signatures in this book.  

I wanted the spine to harmonize seamlessly with my painted canvas covers.  I found patterned paper that worked well for this purpose, cut 1" wide strips and glued them to the spine of the outside folio of each signature.  More than just aesthetic, this adds bulk to the spine so the book will close flat even after media is added.  And because I glued the outside signature of each folio to the next outside signature as each was sewn, the decorative spines are present only on the outside of the book, not the inside, providing me with a book of pure white pages.

Cover:

I cut museum board to size and painted the canvas to cover the boards with multiple layers of thinned, transparent acrylics.  This was my first time using commercial modeling (or molding, depending on the brand you use) paste.  I tinted it first, then spackled it over a stencil of squares using a palette knife, lifted the stencil and left it to dry for a couple of days.  I liked the texture, so I left it as-is instead of sanding it to a smooth finish, then I adjusted the color.  

Spine:

A more detailed view of the spine shows the book with the back cover, and a closer view of the tapes.  I haven't decided whether or not I'll go back in with a little walnut ink to cover the exposed white edges of the holes for the stitching.

 

Tapes:

 The tapes began as end strips of upholstery fabric which  
were chosen for their color alone, as pictured (right).  But after prepping the strips for book tapes, I realized that the color was a bit off.  The left strip in the picture is the fabric before sewing. To correct this, I randomly and haphazardly machine stitched over the tape with a copper brown thread.  The middle tape in the picture illustrates the tapes at this stage.  To coordinate with the color of the covers and the spine, I added a powdery teal thread, and kept adding copper and teal threads alternatively until I felt that the fibers gave the fabric the color it needed to harmonize effectively.  The end product is the third tape on the right. 

Construction:

I constructed the book as part of a project in the Affair With Art group I belong to.  Nancy wrote a set of beautiful instructions for us and posted them to her blog HERE. Her instructions called for leather tapes and a closure, but I preferred to use what I had on hand.  I also tweaked the instructions a bit and bound the book per the specs for book #1 of Full Tilt Boogie, a perpetual online workshop, which I highly recommend, given by Mary Ann Moss.  The end product looks similar to the AAWA book, but differs just a bit in the way it was put together and the materials used. 

Inside Cover:

I really wanted to use the same paper I cut for the spine, as endpapers inside the book.  But with more than one signature, I had to come up with a way to attach a single sheet of paper to the front of the first signature and to the back of the last.  It worked because of the strips I attached to the spines of those signatures.  I simply glued these pages to the inside of the strip in such a way that the wrong side of the paper faced outward.  The signature then had one additional piece of paper, which after the book was sewn, was glued wrong-side-down to the inside cover as an endpaper.  When the book is opened, it looks like this:

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'll be binding 100 books in 2012 with the Artists Of The Round Table.  Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden, is the book we are using.   If you are interested in hand binding books, you'll want to add this to your library!

Eight and Nine

Yesterday I decided to remake a page.  Actually, I do this almost every day.  It isn't about whether or not I like what's on the page, it's about putting what I happen to want on the page today, and reconciling that with what's already there.  I could start with a blank page.  In fact, I do that all the time.  I've heard people say that blank pages can be intimidating.  I've also heard people say that pages with too much stuff on them can be confusing.  Since I'm neither intimidated nor confused, it really doesn't matter to me whether the page is blank, or full.  Either way, to me it's a just substrate.  

Here's the semi-finished product--semi-finished, because it hasn't been written upon yet. The pages are really not wonderful until they've been written on, so this one still has a long way to go.

 The page was remade primarily with paint, and a pine tree that I drew and carved into a stamp several years ago.  "Road-tested" was clipped from a magazine and used as-is.  "High Altitude" was constructed from white rub-on letters on top of a piece of black magazine paper cut to fit the top. The road and date were drawn onto the page with a Rapidograph and Inda ink.  

For remade pages, much of the the beauty is simply that what's under the finished product lends so much to the final outcome, both texturally, and in meaning, that the page wouldn't at all have been the same if what's underneath hadn't been there in the first place.

 Here's what was underneath the page above when I started:

If you look closely, and maybe squint, you can see some of the dots and part of that smilely face underneath the finshed page.  I didn't remove a thing.  Even the brown grid tape was laid on top of the pink tape that was already there, which added to the color of the tape layer on top.  

I use art journals and sketchbooks to stretch my creative muscles.  Sometimes that means sketching out plans.  Sometimes it means glueing-in a lot of things that please me.  Things which might contain elements I'll want to use in a finished piece later.  Sometimes it's all about color, and making notes.  

This particular book was made for Mary Ann Moss's Full Tilt Boogie workshop, and I've been working in it since mid-summer.  I'm using it to stretch my conscious creative decision making.  I say conscious, because so many of the decisions we make are habitual and shortcut the thought process.  This book is full of pages patched together alongside full blank pages, alongside pages with other elements added.  If you'd like to see what the book looked like just after it was created and before I started working on the pages, there's a flip-through you can see by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the bottom of the page.

Speaking of other elements, I drew some of those today to use later.  I've used quite a few frames on other pages of this book, and really like how they can be used to confine and define select words and design elements, so I drew a couple of funky frames with a wide-tipped Sharpie to have on hand for future pages, one on plain paper, and one on patterned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That takes care of Days 8 and 9 of Traci Bunker's 30 Days of Drawing.  A great incentive to keep pencil to paper, and to post about it.  It's not too late to join the challenge.

Thirty Of Thirty

Another page in my FTB Handbook.  I have no idea where it's going, but I'm happy with the start.

This may be the 30th day of Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Get Your Art On, but it won't be the final day of my getting my art on.  I plan to continue with this as often as possible.  They say it takes 40 days to make a habit.  If that's true, then I'm just ten short days away from a daily art blogging habit, and I love it.  

I've learned quite a bit about myself, the way I work, what works for me and what works against me over this last month.  

Years ago, I kept a sketchbook that contained notes, and a notebook that contained sketches, and that was all.  Then I discovered hand-binding my own books, and I used most of them as containers for my collaged poster-like pages that contain both images and words, which are what most people refer to today as art journals, I guess.  

I plan to keep on doing more of the same.  But I'm definitely going back to the notebooks with sketches and the sketchbooks with notes, as well.  I need a daily record of the obvious and mundane, and I need a place to keep working notes of what I'm doing.  I find a ruled notebook works best for me for this function.   I also need the traditional sketchbook that contains drawings and renderings primarily, but also notes, blobs of paint, and whatever else needs to be there.  And I need a place to do some deep, soul level journaling.  A place to dig out the symbolic and interpret it.  I find a large altered or hand-bound book works best for me when this is how I'm working.  And I need a place to create symbolic artwork, to collage and illustrate themes.  Hand-bound books are great for this function, too.  They are also great for any variety of themed journals, such as the journals I keep specifically for Mandalas and for SoulCollage®.  

 So I see books in my future.  Many, many books.  And not just books for artwork, but books to read, also.  One of the great Sumi-e masters suggested that an artist's work day should be nine hours long, divided by thirds.  One third of the day should be spent reading, another third should be spent seeing, and the final third should be spent painting.  That would leave three hours for recreation and meals, 6 days a week with one day off.  I am not often able to stick to that schedule because of the fragmented lifestyle of western civilization.  But at the times when I have been able to do this, it was ideal, and the creativity was unparalleled! 

Twenty-five And Twenty-six

This week is extraordinarily busy.  Tomorrow is full from early morning into the late evening, and Thursday and Friday are completely booked, almost around the clock.  I'm packing an art bag now, because whatever I do, it will be done on the go.  To make it all work, today had to be productive, and it was.  I got a lot done!  But there's more to do, so I'll leave you with the pages in my FTB HandBook for yesterday and today:

Only five days left of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  I'm really thinking about extending it into August....which I guess would make August One the first day of ArtiphyTheHeart Keeping The Art On...?

Today's Pages, And A Cool Event In Hot Phoenix

Not counting today, there are only six more days left of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  So far, so good.  It's never a good idea to get too confident when you're closing in on the finish line.  You never know what's coming up from behind.  So rather than smugly patting myself on the back and taking a break, I'm getting back to work.  

These are the pages I did over the weekend in my FTB HandBook.

It is another hot July in Phoenix!  But if you're in the area, you'll want to stop by Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on Wednesday evening July 27, at 7PM and attend the launch party for Quinn McDonald's new book,Raw Art Journaling.  Quinn will be on hand to autograph copies of her book, and it's cool inside!

Trust me, you're going to want this book!  And you're going to want to have it on hand in time for Quinn's online class.  The class is free, but you will need a copy of the book to follow along. 

What I love most about this book is that it covers a lot of the journaling part of art journaling.  The writing, drawing and doodling part.  There are plenty of great books around that instruct in mixed media background techniques, layouts, and the placement of collage and focal images.  But most of them only touch the surface when it comes to the actual marks you make on the pages, and the creative mindset behind what you put on the page from start to finish .Raw Art Journaling is all about the marks and the words on the page, how to think them up creatively, how to make them, how to keep the ideas flowing, how to make them stand out, and how to hide them when you need the privacy.  And there's a lot more, too.  

A few weeks back when I received my contributor's copy, I sat down to flip through it.  A couple of hours later I realized I had just read it from cover to cover.  I've been back to it four times since, and for me, it counts as great reference material.  Now that I know where everything is in the book, I can zero in on the section that answers the questions I face from day to day.

Raw Art Journaling is available on Amazon now, and also at local book stores.  It's brand new, so if you don't see it on the shelves, ask your bookseller to order it.

Hmmmmmm.....

My brain is fried and my mojo's on vacation.  I spent the day sorting neutrals trying to decide what to fill the *smash* with, but in the end, all I came up with was a cluttered table.  

So I'm back in the HandBook, and I have no idea where this is going.  But anything's better than nothing, and I've made it through 20 days of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  Some things are better left for another day.  I'll be making a wine cooler, joining some friends on turntable, and taking it easy.  Tomorrow's another day.  

Back To The Book. Day 19

I can't keep my nose out of books.  Any books.  But especially, my HandBook.  So while I was ready to put signatures together for yesterday's book, the pages in my first FTB book were crying out to worked on.

You may recognize a handful of the images from the pile I cut a few days ago.  Things I cut never make it into my work so rapidly.  They usually sit for months.  Sometimes longer.  But I'm free to make the rules and change them as I go.  Working without ultimate restrictions is important for everyone, I think.  For me it's imperative.  And the intermediate restrictions I impose upon myself for the sake of order, well, they're mine to keep or break as I see fit.  

I've made it through day 19 of Traci Bunker's 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  It's working so well for me that I just may extend it to 40, then 50...  No promises.  Just thinking out loud.

Day 18, And It's A Smash!

In true Mary Ann style, extra goodies were added to the program at FTB.  So on day 18 of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On, I decided to go from first to last, and leave the other three books in the middle for now.   This means that I've finished my first book and I'm currently working the pages inside of it, and I am working on my second book, but I have put all this on temporary hold to make the final, extra book.  

I wanted it extra large.  The biggest thing I could find on hand was a back issue of "W" that I got a couple of years ago.  It's 10" X 13".  I successfully removed the cover, spine in tact, from the glued magazine block.  Don't ask how.  It worked, and I don't want to jinx it.  Like most issues of "W", the front cover is just a bit shorter than the back, and it's a gatefold cover, so it has a full size flap that folds in.  I used it all.  Here's my finished book, although it unfortunately doesn't show the inside flap, and below are some before and after shots.

The cover, after:

and before.  See how the cover is just a bit shorter than the magazine block itself...

The inside with the cover flap folded in, after:

and before, cover only, magazine block removed...

The insides, flap opened out, after:

and before...

Last but not least, the back cover, after:

I forgot to take a before shot of the back, but by now I'm sure you get the idea.  Unlike the front cover, the back cover extends 1/4" beyond the magazine block. Quite a transformation, yes?  

Tomorrow I'll put together the pages and stitch the text block, but now, in honor of my good friend Rosie's latest piece of artwork, it's Piña Colada time!

 

Progressing Right Along

It's the 17th day of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.  So far, so good.  I haven't missed a day yet, and I've not made such a radical committment to it that I'd whine if I did miss a day.  But it's nice to know that things are rolling right along, and it does get easier every day.  

I keep many open journals at a time.  Each are different from the others, sometimes subtly, others are drastically different.  I usually skip around from book to book.  Whichever way the muse strikes. So far, I've kept to this book since the beginning of July.  I've broken my own record several times over with this one.

The pages in my FTB HandBook are large.  This spread really needs to be photographed so you can see everything that's on the pages.  But there wasn't enough light, so I had to scan partial pages, and quite a bit is left off.  I like the way the gold paint on the design at left resisted the India ink.  It made my stars look transparent.

I'll add more to the pages later.  Right now I'm farming one of the larger library discards I got yesterday for images.  This is how I usually do it:  By removing the book block, saving the boards for a future book cover, and cutting out what's salvageable.

A good portion of these books are damaged.  I get rid of the damaged sections first, then I separate what I might want to keep into piles.  One pile for images, another pile of background color pieces and strips, and a third pile of numbers and words.  

The collage fodder is used for lots of things, not just the journals you see on the web.  Some are used for collage, some of them go into SoulCollage® cards, others find their way into a variety of mixed media pieces, and the rest go into random grab back packets for swap or for sale. I don't spend too much time thinking about the images.  If there are some on both sides of a page, I make a snap decision and I'm done with it.  Most of the book block ends up in the recycling bin.  I don't have to use it all.  

And pretty obviously, not everything I use came from a book or a magazine.  The striped washi-tape down the middle of the spread was a gift from my friend Lisa.  You should stop by her blog and see some of the amazing books she's put together!

Just The Beginning

Today I got out and looked at books.  At them, not in them.  I was looking more at their structure, and wasn't too concerned with what they contained.  So I browsed the 10¢ room at the library and came home with seven books for 70¢.  Most will be farmed for images, but a couple have extraordinary boards and bindings, and they'll make wonderful journal covers.  I was looking for something in particular.  Extra, extra large hardcover children's books with artistic boards and no words or barcodes anywhere.  I found a few smaller books, but I was looking for huge.  

The shelves in that room are added to every day, and what's for sale changes drastically from day to day.  One of these days soon I'll find what I'm after.  

In the meantime, I had only the time to set the bones of a background for my next spread, so these will be weekend pages, not Saturday pages.  You'll have to come back tomorrow to see how they've progressed.  

I think sometimes I feel a lot like the guy on the left.  Aged and stressed, but somehow, also at peace.  And I have a question, if any of you out there can answer it.  The photo on the right is from a 1917 National Geographic.  The cut line says it's the tomb of Ezekiel in the village of Kefil.  I thought Ezekiel didn't die.  I am wrong?  And if I'm right, what's in the tomb?

I'm not sure what any of this will look like when I'm finished.  We'll have to wait and see.   As we're now  into the second half of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On, I'm feeling pretty good about what all can be accomplished when you put your mind to it.  Not that my HandBook doesn't have a lot to do with it.  All that inspiration from MAM and FTB has to find it's way in making books and filling pages!

Yes, It's The Same Book...

One thing I found out a long time ago:  When you're working in a book with many different size pages, you have to make them harmonize.  Not make them the same, or even think too much about them.  But you do make decisions, for me they happen automatically, which take into consideration the design of the whole, as well as the specific area that's being worked on.  

After a section of these, you finally come to a page that's whole, and is not seen from pages in front, or behind it.  It stands alone in the middle.  And all you have to think about is what's right in front of you.  Total freedom.  That's where this spread came from.  Total freedom.  I found the images and took it from there.  The book is bigger than the area shown.  I didn't get outside to photograph these in time, so they had to be scanned.  But you have enough of the spread to get the general idea.

Do you see the part that looks like a seam?  It looks like a vertical line on the right hand page, seaming two pieces of the photo together.   It isn't a seam.  It's a hidden door, thus my lettering, "Hidden Doors".

Here's what it looks like if you open that door:

...A small, separate section.  It's hard to detect if you're not expecting it and you don't know that it's there.  When I'm ready, that's where the journaling will go.  Hidden, but not really secret, because you all know about it now.  Scroll back up and take a look at it closed again.  There's just a fraction of an overlap, so it appears like a seamless seam, and it isn't a seam at all.  It's the image cut, and glued to two separate pages, with a very skinny flap of a page which was the size of the signature sewn in between.

We're now at the half-way point in Traci Bunker's 30 Days Of Get Your Art On, and this is yesterday's  spread in the HandBook that I made for FTB.

Fourteen Days

Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On has been hap'nin' for two weeks now.  Fourteen days.  It's hard to believe, but it's true.  We're just about at the half-way mark.  Here are yesterday's pages...the spread that Richard the Lionhearted was destined for.

Tomorrow you'll get a peek at what I'm doing today.  It's all in my HandBook, which has taken temporary precedence over all the other journals at the moment.  

Besides the ones I'm working in, there are four more yet to be made from FTB alone.  Mary Ann always throws in extras at the end.  She's generous like that.  But right now I'm caught up in this one, which for some reason makes me feel all warm and fuzzy when I work in it.  And quite frankly, right now I'll take all the warm and fuzzy I can get.

Stand by, there's more to come.  Also, if you're really paying attention, you might catch a glimpse of a non-art post that's in the works...I plan to sneak it in very soon.  Just saying... Just in case you're interested...  

More Frames

Day 13 of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On, and I'm experimenting with the many frames I cut as practice runs for the thicker mats that will make it into my next book for FTB.  In the meantime, I was 2/3 of the way through today's spread when I realized that King Richard the First really deserved his own frame (look at the muscles on those arms!).  Tomorrow you'll see how it looks on the page, but for now, here's a quick peek before it is glued forevermore.  

I used my hand-carved stamps to decorate the frame as a special tribute to my friends Belinda Schneider and Hermine Koster.  Belinda and Hermine began Wednesday Stamper many years ago.  But all good things must come to and end, and WS closed its doors at the end of June.

WS was the original, or at least one of the very first and certainly one of the longest running, blog challenge sites on the web.  I started blogging in 2007, shortly before Belinda's SantaClaus Fest, and this is when and where I met some of my longest-standing and dearest friends on the web.  In addition to web friends, through Belinda's posts from Luxemburg, half a world away, I was introduced to a friend right here in Phoenix.  

Belinda's Icicle Doll Fest was the first and best swap I've ever participated in.  A couple of years later, Belinda's swap and our icicle dolls were published in Sew Somerset.

The good things which have come to me personally through my association with Belinda, Hermine, and everyone who participated at Wednesday Stamper are too numerous to mention.  One of the absolute best things, hands down, was meeting my best blogging buddy, Rosie Rowe.  So to commemorate the end of an era, I'm about to post my offering as a final tribute to WS, the place on the web that started it all.  It may be over, but it will never be forgotten.  

The Twelfth Night

 More pages from my HandBook today.  The playbill from Zürich Opernhaus and the image of Punch in today's FTB spread made me think of the theater.  But it really is the twelfth night since this was day 12 of Traci Bunkers 30 Days Of Get Your Art On.

 

 

Seven-Eleven. Day 11.

It's hard to believe that we're a third of the way through Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Get Your Art On, and half-way through AJED.  Didn't this year just start?  Has it really even begun?  It's the eleventh day of the seventh month in the eleventh year of two thousand.  Another day, another page.  This small inside spread is my offering for today:  

I've always known of the connection between script and art.  Developing a good hand for script loosens your grip, tones your hand muscles, and frees you for the many movements and variation of line that make up drawing.  But I'm thanking Mary Ann Moss for the scripty squiggly lines in today's pages.  The journals she shows in her FTB videos are amazing, and there are tons of them.  Videos about journals, I mean.  The ones I peeked at today have a variety of painted squiggly lines.  I fell in love and made a few of my own after I painted out all but one image on the left side of the page.

Speaking of journals, Jeanette House (aka Maisy) interviewed me about art journaling and mandala making and posted it to her blog, Elementally Precious.   She asked some good, tough questions that really made me think!  If you're interested, just click here:  Elementally Precious.

And if you're curious about Making Mandalas, you might want to join me at Wild Precious Studios where I facilitate a Mandala prompt group called Making Mandalas, Art Within The Circle.  We're in our 16th week, but we are just beginning a new 12 prompt series, and you might want to join the other 127 members of our lovely group and take advantage of this opportunity to journal your life cycles with Mandalas.  No idea what I'm talking about?  Then come on over and check it out!  I'll be posting what I make with our group every week to ArtiphyTheSoul, and you can see it there, also.  But there's no substitute for doing this within a group, so don't stop with looking at what I'm doing, come on over to Wild Precious Studios and join us!