ArtiphyTheHeart

Rescuing An Old Book To Make A New One

Last year the Scottsdale Public Library system got rid of thousands and thousands of books by selling them off at 10¢ each.  That's 100 books for $10.  Many of these books were in excellent condition.  Some had been donated, but most were discards from the stacks.  I did my part and rescued armloads of these, some in great shape, some falling apart, some to read, some with only a few but precious salvagable pages, some with rotting book blocks but fabulous boards, some for their spines, some for their covers, some for their blocks, some for their size, etc.   I stayed miles away from book mold, and was surprised to find that the librarians didn't know what it was and how invasive it could be.  But I did pick up some dirty-but-cleanable books, especially those with uber-sturdy library bindings.  

I've done a lot with lots of them already.  The book I'm showing today was one of four, all of them falling apart, glue rotting at the spine with blocks only partially connected to the endpapers.  I thought I'd farm these four for images and text and discard the covers, but then came Kelly Kilmer's newest workshop, "The Journey Within".   Any book can be used for this workshop, but the bookbinding she features uses covers + spine of a book minus the block.  It can be falling apart because it will be restored, spine reinforced with tape, and given new life as a completely new book.  Clear and precise directions along with one-on-one email support are part of the workshop, so if you're interested, you can do this too.  Here are pics of my restoration:

This pic is really blurry, but so was I by the time I shot it.  It isn't the book I restored, but it's just like it.  One of the other three that I picked up in this series.  I forgot to take a before pic, so this will give you an idea of what it looked like prior to gutting and covering.  Hang with me.  The pics improve.

Here's a peek at the inside cover.  Again, it isn't the exact book I restored.  Mine had a navy blue block which had come almost completely unattached to the endpapers and was literally falling out of the cover.  But it is an accurate representation since it's from the same series.

This is the actual block from the book I restored.  I didn't even have to tug.  It fell into my hands the minute I cracked the spine.  Lots of potential inside, too.

Here's my restoration.  Paper from the Paper Studio.  The upholstery fabric I used for the spine was a gift from someone who saves nice tidbits for me and passes them along every once in awhile.

New inside cover.  More Paper Studio paper, and as you can see, I carried the covered spine all the way through, wrapping it entirely around before stitching in the new sets of signatures.

Here's a close-up of the new spine.  Unfortunately, you really can't see the stitching because I used black bookbinding thread that lost itself inside the texture of the upholstery fabric.  But it looks great in real life.  Subtle, but good.

Keep in mind that inside and out, the cover will change dramatically as the book is worked from the inside-out.  I usually complete the cover after working most of the inside since the cover will take a beating traveling with me and being repeatedly opened and closed.  It's nice and simple as is, but just wait till it becomes art!

X-Book With Pockets

Moving right along, making 100 books this year with Artists Of The Round Table, the third book on the list is the X-Book with pockets.  

This book is constructed like the first X-Book which you can see by clicking HERE, with the addition of a simple cover and pocketed pages.  Notice the arrows which I've drawn on the pic at the top.  The cover is glued to the book only at the point of the 3/8" wrap around on the first and last pages of the book.  The arrows point to the open area where the cover is not attached to the book.  This is significant, because with a single sheet of paper folded into eight sections with pockets, and six of these exposed as book pages, the other two are hidden behind the cover.  So you end up with a book of six visible pockets, and two hidden ones.  

Stretch out the cover from the back of the book, and a hidden area with secret pockets is revealed.  I slipped in a couple of plain tags to highlight the pockets.  The arrow points to the secret hiding place.

Once again, if you're interested in any of the books I'm making, or if you're interested in bookbinding in general, pick up a copy ofMaking Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms by Alisa Golden.  It's a great book, and the one we're using for this ambitious project.  

If the first handful of books in my posts strike you as a bit on the simple side, let me assure you that each contains valuable elements crucial to some of the most sophisticated bindings.  Simple perhaps, but not simplistic.  The steps we are taking and the order in which they are taken provide an increasing bank of information, with each of the steps building upon the next for a comprehensive enclyclopedia of knowledge in making books and binding them.  Each book, even those that seem the most simple, contain cuts, folds, and steps in construction that form the basis of many of the more complicated structures.  So stick around!  I'll be getting to some of those shortly!

Little Pages

Most of my time is taken up with painting.  I work around a painting in layers, section by section.   While one section dries I work on another, then I go back and add more layers, fleshing it out.  This is slow, satisfying work.  I spend a lot of time thinking about it while I paint, and I take breaks often.  I love this slow work that takes a days, weeks, or months to complete.  But I also have a real need to finish something in a day for the pat-on-the-back that a sense of completion brings.  

This isn't the reason I work in a tiny collaged book that will morph into an art journal.  I do it because I love it, and because it provides a home for some very luscious snippets that really shouldn't end up in the dust bin.  But working in a tiny book does have the added benefit of quick accomplishment, especially when it's broken up into tasks, such as collage and paint today, embellish and journal on another day.  

Here are a couple of 2 page spreads from my tiny collage book.  They have a very unfinished look partly because they are unfinished, and partly because they haven't yet been sewn into book form.  Working this small, it's much easier for me to collage and embellish the pages, then sew and journal later.  If you click HERE, you can see a post that puts the size of these tiny pages into perspective.  The pages are 3" X 4-1/2".  The book is the one I'm holding in my hand in the first photo when you click the link, and also in the last photo when you scroll down. 

I've also been spending a lot of time reading.  I'm a big fan of Haruki Murakami, and I'm finding that his book1Q84 is unputdownable.  I work more smoothly when I'm in the middle of really good fiction.

And last but not least, there's a new post up on ArtiPhybers.  Click HERE and take a look.

Shorts Book

Here's another first book for those who are learning bookbinding.  Once again, even though I've made these in the past, I'm so glad to have the refresher course because there's so much I'd forgotten.  I had to ask for clarification that my page-turning was in the correct order, but it turns out that I got it right.

This is another book constructed from a single sheet of paper.  I used 98# Canson mixed-media paper, a heavier weight for this book than the last because there were fewer folds, and I didn't want the watercolor and ink to bleed through the pages.  It worked. I prepared the paper by spraying a light solution of gouache over a few of stencils on both sides.  I ground some ink and used the wet side of a sheet of sumi-é paper to make a few brush sketches.  When I realized that I had done nine cats, I got the idea for Nine Lives.

The cats were randomly sketched all over the paper, so I tore them out and added some gouache to the edges.  Pages three and four open up and down.  There are four folds and two sides, so eight pages in all.  I decided to use these up and down pages to add the ninth cat.

The chop I used says "long life".  It's a traditional chop carved from soap stone and I inked it with the traditional toxic red chop ink that takes forever to dry.  I zapped it with a hairdryer to speed things up, but I think it will take the full few weeks before it sets, regardless.  In the meantime, I blotted it a bit, then separated the pages with waxed paper.

This book is part of a project that some members of Artists Of The Round Table are working on.  We plan to make 100 books using Alisa Golden's bookMaking Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms as our guide.  

If you'd like to see all posts of the books I'm making for this project, scroll up to the top of this page, click on "Archives", then click on "Making Handmade Books Workshop" from the category menu.  

X-Book

One of the first books you make when you study bookbinding is the X-Book.  It's simple, but its folding has a purpose that repeats with other more complicated bindings.  It's what I used to call a root book, since its construction is the basis for so many books.

Some of us in Artists Of the Round Table are working our way through Alicia Golden's bookMaking Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms.  We'll be making 100 books beginning with the X-Book.  Here are some pictures of mine:

It's made from a single sheet of paper that is cut and folded so that the middle puffs out.

It's easier to get the picture from the top.  Each fold is a page, and when the two end pages are pushed together toward the middle, it forms an X, which gives the book its name.

Then the outside folds of the X wrap around the inside folds to create the cover and the back.

Even if you made a gazillion of these in grade school, you make them still when you learn to bind books.  And it's amazing how easy it is to forget the simple stuff!

I decorated the pages with a combination of lettering, drawing, and clear stamps from Layers Of Colors, Close To My Heart, and Character Constructions.  

India ink and a Rapidograph coordinate perfectly with black VersaFine ink.  I added some of my own lines and quirks to the some of the stamped images, and it was impossible to tell where their lines left off and mine began.

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!

Reveling In Moments

I'm two pages away from finished with the collage templates from Kelly Kilmer's Revel In The Moment workshop.  You probably think that means I'm almost finished, right?  Ha!  Wrong!  There are so many ways to use these templates, it boggles the mind!  You think I'll just use them the right way round?  Really?  And you say you know me?  Ha again!  Besides, this is just naked collage.  No journaling, no drawing, no penwork, no text, no paint, nothing added, nothing painted out....

But here are the next two pieces of collage in the series.  They could stand on their own, but they won't have to.  Sooner or later, I'll be adding more, subtracting some, etc.  You get the picture!

If you could see what the others are doing with the same templates I'm using, you'd be in an extended state of disbelief.  You'd say, "No.  Can't be.  Nothing the same.  Not even similar".   But you'd be wrong.  The possibilities are infinite.  Too bad we've over-used that word: Inifinite.  Because the possibilities truly are!

Mug Shots

One of the art groups I belong to (An Affair With Art) has asked us if we're tea drinkers, and if so, what we prefer to drink from.  Easy questions for me.  I drink tea all day long!  Twinings English Breakfast keeps me going, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf's Swedish Berries makes me calm and sleepy.  Here's my cup of choice:

Last mother's day, my daughter Amy took me to Anthropologie and told me to pick out a tea cup.  So many beauties to choose from, but the minute I set my eyes on this pretty orange mug, embossed, scalloped, and paint spattered, I knew it was the one for me.  Orange is the color of creativity, and paint spatters, well, every artist needs a paint-spattered mug!

Here's an inside view.  Pre-tea, of course.  I love this!  Usually when I spatter paint in my tea, I have to throw it out.  I love that I can drink out of this!

Mug Shots:

In the meantime, why not join me and have a cup of tea or coffee, too?  And while you're at it, why not share a pic of your favorite cup or mug?  Just leave a comment in this post with a link to a pic of your favorite cup, and we'll all stop by and take a look!  If you post about your favorite tea cup/coffee mug/ or other drinking recepticle of choice, please link back to this post so others will know where to share their links if they want to play along, too! 

Right now I'm busy-busy-busy.  Trying to finish hold-overs from 2011, and beginning some new projects in 2012.  There's a lot on my plate, but at least I love everything I have to do!

My Current List Of Stuff and Stuff To Do:

Here's a partial list:

• Three books ready to bind and stitch -- I thought there were five, but I can't find the other two... Oh well.  If they're around, they'll show up eventually!
• Take a Stitch Tuesday.  LOVE this.  If you want to know all about it, click the TAST badge on my sidebar.
• Setting up ArtiPhybers.  You can go there now, but I haven't yet made a first post, and I'm slow at getting links and photo albums uploaded.  Eventually -- sooner, rather than later, I hope -- it will be home for all my fiber art (including TAST), and I'll add to it regularly.  You can get there from the link in my side bar.
• Journaling, of course.  Three collage journals and a sketchbook/notes journal are active at the moment.  There are others too, but right now I'm concentrating on these.
• Kelly Kilmer's Revel In the Moment workshop.  I'm working without stopping in this one.  Can't get enough of it!  My friend and art partner Rita and I spent hours with this last Thursday, and will have a repeat performance next week.  In the meantime, we're both collaging our little hearts out every chance we get (which is one of the reasons I'm behind on everything else...)
• An Artsits Of The Round Table workshop.  Beginning tomorrow, we'll be binding 100 books in 2012.
• A printing project, which I'm defining and refining as I go.  More about that as things progress...
• A crocheted throw-WISP
• Three quilt tops-WISPS
• A really gorgeous (if I may say so myself) mixed fiber illustration--more on that later...
• Painting!  Lots of painting!  A semi-new direction in paint and collage for me, and I'm loving every minute!  It takes me back to my childhood art loves.  More to come on that, also.
• Oh, and reading.  LOTS!  But that's not unusual.  Right now the books on my nightstand are: Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison, and Nuns and Soldiers (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Iris Murdoch.  Neither of them new; both are favorites of mine.  And this is the book I'll be working my way through as my 100 bindings in 2012 progress: Alisa Golden's Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms  

But now I have to get busy on these things so I'll have something to photograph, and you'll have something more to see!

Sorting Collage Elements: Size Matters

I've been asked a lot of questions lately about collage.  Most center around what to use and how to decide.  It's a big subject and there were a lot of questions that I eventually answered in an ArtiPhacts page that you can read by clicking HERE.  But here and now, I'd like to show you some pictures of how I work and what seems to work best for me.  It boils down to sorting, and when it comes to sorting, I've found that size matters most. 

I work in more than one journal at a time.  There are usually more than three, but there are always at least three.  One small, one medium, and one large.  The largest journal on top measures 7" X 9-3/4" when closed, so a two-page spread is 14" X 9-3/4".  The medium journal is 6"X 6" with a spread of 12" X 6", and the smallest measures 3" X 4-1/2".  With two pages open, that's still only 6" X 4-1/2".

I start with the large.  Always.  The bottom piece in the pile is a 12" X 12" piece of scrapbooking paper.  The image on top is cut from a magazne ad, and measures approx. 10" X 7-1/2".  The scraps cut from these large pieces make up the lion's share of what ends up in the stash for my medium size journal.   The bottom part of the page which was cut away from these two faces was saved for a couple of elements that fell into the "small" category.  The rest was tossed into the recyling bin.  

To give you a better idea of scale, here's the image from the picture directly above, placed on top of the largest journal from the first picture on top.  

This is a pile of papers and an image suitable to be used or cut for my medium size journal.  After use, the scraps from this pile can be used again, or if very small, will be saved with other items appropriate for the smaller size journal.  There is far less waste.  More items are used for collage, and fewer end up in the bin.

Here's the image from the pic directly above set on top of a page in my medium size journal.  Refer back to the first pic, if necessary, for a better idea of scale.

Above are examples of pages that I might use for my smallest journal.  The yellow square in the center is a post-it-note, and will give you a better idea of scale and help you to visualize just how tiny some of those snippets are.  Now take a good look at the clothing in the magazine pages.  Farming these for pattern, not for image, will yield a lot of interesting background material for a tiny journal.  The size of the heads are a good size for the tiny journal also.

Be sure to go back to the top so you'll have a better idea of just how small these pages are.  You can see that I've laid one of the heads from the pic directly above on top of the right hand page of this spread, and you can see how the size fits.  It's even larger than the heads of Diego Rivera and his son as they appear in the photo that I used, and the bottom snippet of pattern is smaller than some of the pattern I could cut from the pages in the pic directly above.

Now expand on this concept.  There are pages and pages of pattern in magazines, some of them large.  There are pages and pages of solid color and gradients.  All make good collage material.  The scraps from the big pages can be used in medium size and smaller journals.  What doesn't work gets tossed into a recycling bin.

I like to use a combination of pattern from a wide variety of sources on each page.  There's more interest this way.  The face on the left hand page of the spread above was cut from a stamped image.  So many possibilities, so many combinations.  Limitless.

The pic below suggests a method for finding images.

Here I've cut squares from the middle of two pieces of red paper.  Both sizes are good for zeroing in on parts of an image, and to get an instant idea of how the image will look if it's cut from different parts of a whole.  Image finders like these are commonly used in art and photography, and you can make your own in any size or shape that suits you.

By sorting images and papers by size first, I save the largest pieces for the largest journals, use them first, then move on to smaller, then smaller still.  My stash of papers and images is large enough that I can rotate papers and images so that I'm not using cuts from the same pages in the smaller journals on the same days.  I've collected it all over time.  Most of the patterned papers and scrapbooking paper were given to me by manufacturers when I was on a design team.  Some of it I've swapped with other artists, and lots and lots are found pattern, stripes and solids cut from magazines and junk mail.  

For those who have asked, I hope this gives you an idea of what I cut, how I sort, and how I use the elements I've saved.  The sorting is methodical, but in the end, the choices are very random, and I always pick what I think works together visually, rather than concentrating on subject or story matter.  Personally, I'm not building stories, I'm combining elements in a manner that appeals to me.  It would be fine to do it another way, but this is just how I choose to work, and it works for me.

 

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.

In The Cards

Day three of Traci Bunkers 30 Days of Drawing.  Rapidograph, sepia Micron, and gray Pitt pens on an ex-library page in my Hand Book.  Just by coincidence, the last page in this book will be finished on the 31st of December, and I'll be starting a new book on January first.   If that's not serendipity, nothing is!  

I have three new books in various stages of binding.  Two will be filled with white mixed-media paper, and the third with Full Tilt Boogie style signatures.  I'll post pics of all three soon.

Sunset Orange

I've mentioned before that I'm following Kelly Kilmer's Journey Of You workshop (JOY), and that I love the taped binding, paperback journals we use in the class.  I've made dozens of them since first following Kelly's PDF.  I've also mentioned that we're doing a fun project to stretch our color muscles in another group I belong to, by working our way through the entire set of Crayola colors and creating separate illustrations for each of those colors.  

I keep a lot of journals "open" (available to work in) at a time, and I work in each of them differently.  The sole purpose of these books is artistic growth.  Some are sketchbooks.  Some are collage.  Some are mixed media.  Some are watercolor.  Some are sumi-é.  There are others, each with their own purpose, as well as their own media.  This particular book combines collage and pen work almost exclusively.  

Today I'm going to outline the method I use in this book to get the color on the page and tie it all together.   I'll also tell you the general set of rules I created for this page, and how I used them to make sense of the page, by resolving the remaining disparate elements of composition.

First, I scribbled a generous amount of the Crayola color du jour, in this case Sunset Orange, onto a clean swatch of white paper.  I grabbed a small handful of magazines and a pair of scissors, and quickly flipped through each magazine, stopping only when the color on a page matched the swatch of crayon color in my hand, and I cut it out, then kept going.  

With those cut swatches in hand, I then started my page flipping fresh, in order to find various tints, shades and saturations of the same hue, located them, and cut.  Then I did a third flip-through, looking for one major, and one minor accent color, keeping in mind the (interior) design maxim, "something dark, something light, something dull, and something bright."  

Once I had all my swatches, I set the magazines aside and fiddled with a background arrangement.  I limited my choices to the shapes and textures of what I had cut out, and how they would actually fit on the page.  

In this book, I purposely make myself work with page sizes that are large in order to put myself in a position to have to strain my brain to use only the limited stash I've cut to work with.  If my pages were small, I might be able to get away with only one or two pieces.  But with larger pages, there is inevitably the need to piece some things togehter, not having enough of one or more cut colors to fill the larger space.  

At the same time, I work with another rule that I made for myself which requires the composition to be artistically balanced.  My personal rule for this book is that it doesn't have to make sense in any other regard. I'm not working with images, I'm composing with color.  If an image or a pattern springs up, it's used for the color and the balance of color, not because of what it represents as an image.  I don't lo0k for subjects;  I let the subjects evolve.

When the page is covered, I step back.  I usually take a break and walk away from it for awhile.  The break also gives the glue some time to dry, which helps the page uncurl.  Then I come back to it, and if necessary, I look at it very closely and ask it what it needs.  Maybe the answer is "nothing".

A "nothing" answer is so rare that truly, I can't rememer if it has ever actually happened.  Most often, a focal point is either lacking entirely, or needs support.  This is when I look for, or create, specific "fits" for the piece.  I ask some balance questions, too. Too chunky?  Add some line.  Too liniar?  Add some chunks.  Too dark? Add some light, Too light, add some dark, etc., etc.  I make everything , including the date, part of the composition by including it the most auspicious place.  

If you're a collage artist and not sure which of your creative muscles most need to be stretched, I'd recommend Kelly's J.O.Y. workshop.  I'd also recommend Kelly's workshop if you already know what you're doing and just want to have fun.  Guaranteed, you'll learn something new along the way.  If you're paying attention to what you're doing, Kelly's classes train you to teach yourself new things.  You'll develop a better sense of compostion, and also a better sense of detail.  Your eyes will be sharpened.  

Kelly gives you everthing you need to get started: Clear instructions for making the book you'll use, an array of design templates that you can use as-is, or customize, a place to share your work and interact with others who are on the same artistic path, and personal feedback when you need it.  

The rules I followed for my page were my own, not Kelly's.  But with Kelly's workshop, you will inevitably discover things that you are more and less comfortable with, and you'll begin to create for yourself, new and different rules each time you work.  You'll stretch.  

My advice is to push yourself in the direction of your discomfort.  Create artistic dilemmas through rules you make which severly limit your choices.  Create conflict, then resolve it.  You'll be amazed at what you find you can do after all.  And once you've become familiar with them and have learned to master them,  a lot of things that you thought you didn't like to do will mysteriously begin to appear on your lists of "like to do" items.  

When it comes to your artistic tool box, which is simply your set of skills, there is one overriding truth:  If you hate something, it's your master.  If you love it, you've mastered it.

Disjointed

Do you ever feel that way?  Not "out of joint", but disjointed?  Like your limbs have been severed and were put back on differently?  I'm not sure how to explain this with words.  

I think mother's hearts are a good example to use.  They're all disjointed, since they become ripped, torn, disloged, partially amputated, and then are put back together again.   Not at all like broken hearts.   They're completely different.  Disjointed has more to do with limbs and hearts and organs that are used to shreds, then mended and put back to be used once more.   Sometimes they're even put back together before they've been mended.  They're never the same as when they were new.  They're better afterward.  Using them to pieces perfects them.

Mother's hearts get this way from a variety of sources, least of all usually, from their own children.  It's usually the people that threaten their children in mild ways or worse that cause the disloge.  The people who pick on them.  Or the people who should care more for them, but somehow don't, and it tears your heart.   Today's page is for moms and other nurturers.

 

 

Cool

I'm back to my little handmade, hand-bound, brown paper wrapper journal.  It's one of my favorites.  You can see it HERE.  It, and two more like it, were made for Kelly Kilmer's J.O.Y. workshop, and I'm filling this one with alphabet pages for the Affair With Art group I belong to.  

I love J.O.Y.  It's completely different from other ways I journal and collage.  I limit each and every piece of collage, backgrounds included, to stuff pulled from magazines.  No painted backgrounds, although some tape and penwork and maybe a brush stroke or two on top is allowed.  My rules.  I want to see how far I can go using the thinnest materials possible.  No cardstock.   No commercial papers. 

Here's "C":

Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Ravens And Crows

I'm jumping from book to book.  Today's page was created in my little brown paper wrapper journal which is one of the paperback journals I made in Kelly Kilmer's J.O.Y. group.  With the exception of Nancy Baumiller's crow, everything on this page was cut from books or magazines.  No paint.  Just strips of paper or cut paper circles, images or shapes.  That's all.  Oh, and pen work.  Quite a bit of that, too.  I used my Rapidograph and India ink for the letters, numbers and flourishes, and accented with a white water-based Sharpie poster paint pen.  That's all.

I made several paperback journals in J.O.Y.  I've dedicated this one to the Crayola crayon project we're doing in another art group I belong to.  Each week, a different colored Crayola crayon is the inspiration for whatever we want to create.  I'm a little behind the curve, but the inspiration color for this page was Crayola's Tropical Rain Forest.