So the first couple of photos are new books (yay!) and the last couple are my first attempts at collage probably since grade school. Well, granted that's not entirely true, I just found an old portfolio where, at the beginning of grad school (before I became a puppet upon the fickle hand of science), I stuck a bunch of band stickers, a part of a comic strip and an ad from the Stranger. Maybe I'll take a picture of that soon. It actually looks OK. But I digress...
So the first book I made for my cousin Ari. She has just graduated from Loyola Marymount University and has a degree in something like "sound that you don't even know is going on during the movie." It (the book, not the degree) was made from paper that she picked out on our trip to Uwajimaya's, which is always fun (going to Waji's, but I suppose would also be appropriate to bookmaking). Waji's is especially fun since they have a ton of snacks-nori maki, manju, tomoame, and a whole variety of pickles. The paper inside(the book, not Waji's) is from the French Paper Company called Mod-Tone Taupe. You can't really see, but the pages are lightly printed with a tan, starburst kind of pattern. It's really very nice. It's a quarter page size and is one of the few books where I think the endpages are exactly straight with the end of the cover. The book is 60 pages.
Because of the upcoming scrapbook extravaganza, I decided I should try my hand at larger books. This one is made from Japanese paper from de Medici Ming and it measures 10.24" tall by 9.25" wide. This is my largest book yet. Inside, there are 54 sketchbook pages inside. The endpages are a lovely dark blue. It is thus far unspoken for. How rad is the red and green and gold paper? I think totally rad.
I hadn't really made any landscape-oriented books yet (except for the book I made for my dad over winter break, I think); this one is also filled with 80 pages of sketch book paper, and measures 6.25ish" tall x 9.25" wide. And it's bound using a french knot stitch. Also needing a home. The ones with sketchbook paper are not good for scrapbooking 'cause the pages are not acid free. Mostly I bought the paper 'cause it was pretty reasonable and I wanted a chance to make larger books than a quarter sheet.
Isn't this one pretty? Also unclaimed. Pretty soon I'm going to have to peddle my wares to some kind, indie-friendly shop. Quarter-page size, 48 pages of 80 lb text from the Mod Tone line in Blush (so very faint pink flowers adorn the pages of this book). The cover is entirely, well, covered, in a natural bookcloth, and then when you open the book it has all the pretty paper inside. The full coverage of the cover with bookcloth makes a very professional and neat looking book.
And now we come to the collage portion of today's post.
So I recently procured (and when I say procured, really I just mean "bought") a book called ARTIST to artist (I'm not really sure if the capitals are really supposed to stay intact, but that's how it is on the spine of the book). In any case, it's a book put out by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Yep, there's a museum for picture book art and one day I'm going to go there. Anyway, so the book is basically a bunch of very established picture book artists (name your favorite, they're in there: Stephen Kellog, Tomie de Paoula, Chris Van Allsburg, and of course Eric Carle himself) explaining either their process or how they started out or whatever. The nice things about illustrators is that in general, they're pretty terse, so there's no going on and on about things (bet you wish I was following their example right now.) OK, so yeah, the sharing is nice and all, but along with each of their essays, each artist has a fold out page that shows their self portrait and samples of their picture book work. In the case of Eric Carle, it shows (kinda) how he made The Hungry Catapillar, by drawing on tracing paper and using the guides on the tracing paper to cut out pieces of tissue paper and then drawing on them.
So I decided to try it and here were the results. In reverse order are a Sasquatch! (inspired by the recent festival at the Gorge I just attended), a girl in the rain ('cause I live in Seattle, so really there's nothing else to show), and two kind of weird looking monsters (I suppose I should explain that I also recently got a book that is called Jim Henson's Designs and Doodles (and dude, it was $5--no way I could pass that up)...so those sketches might have been some of the inspiration for the monster like things.
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