my private bookiness

I always forget how much I LIKE making books, once I get rolling. The first hurdle, of course, was coming up with a concept. For a while I thought I would do LAND and SEA, and then I thought I would do LOST and FOUND, but I ended up with WILD and TAME. Which meant I had to find book-form-shapes that would suit. I considered an accordion book, because I like them so much, and briefly considered a flag book (although my flag book from class came out a little wonky), but in the end I went back to the forms I like (so far) best: stab-bound softcover and the magic book.

I started with WILD. For this, I used an older poem of mine because it was making a lot of noise and REALLY wanted to participate. I created a text block in InDesign and printed it on shiny paper for that crepuscular feel, and then I put it together in a stab-bind with fox colors.

THEN I had to figure out what SIZE of magic book. I ended up getting a big sheet of soft paper from Plaza, which folded into a rather large magic book. I thought it would be good for TAME because the design, while quite pretty, seemed like a domestic pretty, not a free-range pretty.

I decided to paint images for the book. I thought about acrylics because they have good lines, but then realized that the blur of watercolors would add to the claustrophobic feeling I get when I think TAME. Deciding what kinds of images to paint took most of an afternoon.

I painted them on 190 # watercolor paper, and then added a tiny bit of precision with my trusty Rotring art pen.

Things I learned:

1) I love playing with paper

2) I have a lot of trouble not getting myself covered with glue

3) My dogs are not as helpful as Courtney's dog

4) Although a stab-bind is really easy to unravel upon error, it gets harder when the thread decides to make itself into a Gordian knot of unspeakable horror.

5) I still love magic books quite a lot but need to practice more with other kinds.