Handbound Book: Page 10

Felt like drawing some jellyfish in a more realistic way than I usually do. I took the photo on a grey day, so the pictures are slightly blue-er than what they really are. The darker scribbles on the jellyfish bodies are actually a shade of orange.

Page Technique: Sky was done first in plain ol’ blue highlighter (because I love highlighters- cheapest and fastest color ever. Next I pasted several cutouts of buildings I received from an ad or brochure. Next I sketched in the jellies with the use of some photo references. I outlined them in dark blue pen from my trusty set of old markers. I later added some lighter maker. In order to color the jellies in more, I used my prismacolor pencils to add in blue and purple on the caps and light blue and a scribble of orange on the tentacles. I outlined some buildings afterwards because I thought that they would stand out more.

Detail: (Supposed to be orange scibbles on the jelly.)

Later I might add a phrase at the top. I haven’t thought of a clever line of words or a quote I like yet.

Rogue.

Handbound Book: Page 11

Page 11: Lost in Lines

Finally finished page 11. It’s a whole page with crazy lines and patterns and doodling. I don’t think I managed the patterns very consistantly and from far away the thing looks a little crazy, but it is done. Frankly there’s no way to fix it or any space to add anything.

Page Technique: Pretty self explanatory from the photos. It’s just some roofing paper and covered in outlines in pen and sharpie. I just kept doodling and making patterns till the page was full.

Here is a close up of some of the detail:

You can see there is som difference in the quality of the ink in certain places. The ballpoint pen is slightly off-black (?) and reddish, while the sharpie is very dark. Towards the end, I was getting tired of the sharpie fumes and switched to an old color pen.

I’m also working on page 10 at the same time:

It will be next after a little more marker work and maybe even a bit of paints. And there will be JELLIES.

Rogue.

Practice and Progress

Some book stuff.

I’m trying to work slow with the book. It’s a tricky line because I want to get the pages painted and done, but at the same time I don’t want to make mistakes. For this reason, I made a little practice paper to try out sewing into paper and colors. I painted the grey watercolor over both sides, added a little rubbing alcohol, and painted the random lines all over it. Unfortunetly I did learn that the watercolor paper is way too thick to sew into (in a quick fashion). I had to pre-punch the holes with an exacto knife and it took an excessive amount of time to sew. I frankly am too impatient with a needle and tread to try this again. I added the numbers (which are old old label numbers I found in a box) last.

It will probably be glued into the book or put into an envelope. It was a good practice of painting and such, so I’ll keep it for later. Besides that, there’s some images for the next pages (9 and 16). I have an idea for page 9, sort of going to play around with it, but I painted page 16 only out of impulse. I used a sprizer to add rubbing alcohol to the watercolor. Alcohol is a pretty cool thing to drop onto watercolor because it makes odd patterns that are splotchy, but not as splotchy and textured as adding salt.

Page 9 wip1

Page 16 wip1

Rogue.

Handmade Book: Page 7

More book stuff. Here is page 7, still tentatively done. I had become increasingly interested with Fibonacci numbers and I diecided to make a page while I was still happy with math. Math and I have a messy, love-hate relationship. I like that math can be definitive, but it’s a little too harsh sometimes.

Page Technique: It’s on hotpressed watercolor paper, with a splash grey watercolor in the background. I literally just colored it just to have a color on it. I scrawled math all over it in sharpie, paint pen, and regular pen. Over all that I wrote the first 17 or so numbers in the Fibonacci series in a grey pen I found in my desk. I made the 07, 8, 1, and 3 with computer paper, black paint pen, orange highlighter, and a white gel pen. Then I wrote a really poorly written poem I had from a year or two ago.

I suppose you could read the poem on the page. It’s a pretty bad poem, full of awkward phrases. I regret even writing it on the page now, but it’s done in paint and there’s no going back. The ending is the worst. I think I was too tired to make a coherent ending. It was written for a creative writing class, and it was sort of inspired (well now I think a lot of the page is inspired) by Jean Micheal Basquiat. http://basquiat.com/ Except Basquiat could draw crazy words everywhere and it would make sense. I just made a mess except with numbers and calculus.

#13. Obviously I need to use a little more glue...

Another detail shot:

ALL THE PRETTY NUMBERS AGAIN AND AGAIN.

I didn’t specifically plan it, but the number 7 ended up on this page. Thumbs up to my subconcious for numbering the page for me.

Rogue.

Adventures in Handbound Books

I finally hand bound this book/journal/thing. A long time ago I took a class and basically we made and worked on a art journal for a whole year. Before the end of the class a friend and I set up a new journal with all the tools we had in the class. It was kind of “for the road” since we had the resources there in the class and were leaving. That must have been atleast four years ago, and the book covers and pages have been collecting dust under my desk. Well no more!

Downward view of book

I found that I never punched the holes between the signatures and appently left behind the strip of canvas I was planning to bind the covers with. I simply could not use the technique I was taught in the class for binding the book, so I scoured the internet and found plenty of resources for bookbinding. I used bits and tricks from all the tutorials and bound the book with some matching fabric I had laying around. I added fabric to the spine before the pages were in- UPSIDE DOWN. I wanted the fabric to lay downwards, but unfortunetly they’re stuck upwards in the opposite direction than what I intended. Let that be a lesson for all to check twice before sewing. For whatever original intention I had, there is a chunk carved out of the cover in the rough shape of an eye. I’ll get around to fixing that later…

Book Cover- Maybe I'll carve something on the front. Fabric is sewn into the spine for fun.

It has approximately 42 pages, seven sheets of hot pressed/or cold pressed water color paper in each signature. There are some random papers in there, like what seems to be some kind of illustration paper that’s a vanila color and some kind of roofing paper. It’s been so long since I did the last book that I’ve forgotten all the intricate things about making books and what I wanted to do with this book. I’ve already started on some pages. I would scan these puppies to show off all the tiny details, espeically in the watercolor page, but I’m super cautious with handling the pages and stuff (and my scanner has it out for me…)

Inside cover- has a little handmade envelope for something and covered in meaningless doodles

Page 2- A watercolor treatment with my two favorite colors

Page 3- The Spoon song lyrics in the background didn't match what finally landed on top.

I’m still working on all the pages. I don’t think I could ever put them down and say it’s finished for the world. Page 3 is a big dissapointment to me, since I intended a very different ‘feel’ from the fish (which is a cutout from some magazine) and the tree. They don’t match the lyrics in the background, so I’ll probably come back and add something or another.

Rogue.