book fun

So here are my ten books. They are sprawly if I open them all, so I have made two pictures, one of which is them looking all tall and organized with a couple of sprawly ones, and one which shows them stacking nicely, as if they play well with others (they don't).

As to what I learned... I learned a lot of things. I think one of the most important was that I can keep changing things for a while until it all actually (more or less works). The MOST important, though, is that if you have enough Mod Podge caked onto your hands, and the dog barks right next to your head while you're trying to use an Xacto knife, the Mod Podge will absorb most of the cut action of the blade as it sinks into your finger. Yay for Mod Podge!

Voila! a prototype!

Ladies and gentlemen!

I give you:

A BOOK!

This is the title page...

Of course, it is what we in the writing & publishing biz call a ROUGH DRAFT. By which I mean ROUGH, by golly.

This is what my little accordion friend looks like spread out. And please ignore the CHAOS of my "desk," which is actually my "dining table," until my office upstairs is fixed again (long story).

But I think I finally figured out solutions to the 97 things that were continuing to NOT WORK.

Now I just have to make a ton more. Which is fine.

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.