Slowly, Slowly...

...may well catchee monkey, but when it's the only speed you've got, it's a pain in the bahookie.  I want to make another book,  a series of books, really, and decided it would be interesting to do it in lutradur.  The semi transparent nature of the cloth, and its natural stiffness in the heavier weights, make it an interesting choice.  And as luck would have it, I found some precut pieces in the lutradur box (this is lutradur 100), offcuts from the kits I used to sell. A bit of judicious trimming, and they were ready to take some background colour.

I chose Naples Yellow acrylic, in the end, a slightly dusky yellow that provides a good contrast to browns, but not overly dark.  I watered the paint to a watercolour consistency because whilst I want the colour, I don't want the semi transparent nature of the cloth to be hampered by the solid nature of undiluted acrylic paint; that will come with the prints I will add to the pages later.  And that's pretty much the extent of my activity today.  Fortunately, however, whilst I doubt I'll be able to do much more, I can at least think (well, for a while, anyway).

My process has always been to turn up at the empty page, or piece of cloth, and do what seemed necessary according to my inner artist, unconscious mind or whatever's in charge when I work.  That doesn't seem to work well with a book.  The writers among you (hi, Ann) will not be surprised by this, given the amount of planning, writing, rewriting and editing necessary to produce either a novel or a piece of non fiction (and don't start me on poetry...).  With a visual book, it's even more important that one's intention, at least, is clear, because, unlike a novel, the sequencing is not clear.  My intention for this particular book, is to use the spear/tree, shield/leaf motifs that I've been cutting from the lino (here's the one I'm working on just now)

And that's as far as I've got.  Because whilst I know these motifs are important to me, I'm not sure exactly why...and the why is the core of the art, both visual and poetic .  I'm not stuck, exactly.  I can poddle along with the mechanics of the making, the carving, the printing, the assembly.  I know what the centre of the book will look like, though not the cover (apparently this one needs a cover, who knew...) or the sequence of images before and after it.  And it needs a poem.  I think.  Or maybe it doesn't.  Maybe it needs random words, for now, and the poem will emerge over time.  I suspect that it's not one of these very short pieces I've been writing for the books, but rather a longer piece, that will extend across several books.  And perhaps those books will need their own case.  Or bag.  Yeah, bag.

And this is how my creativity works (you may have noticed).  It doesn't really matter if I can start with nothing, or not.  What's important, is that I keep asking myself the questions, and make, in response to the answers. 

Waste Not...

...well, yes, I have a thing about not wasting paint.  And there was some left over from the painting I did on the last piece so...reader,  I made monoprints.  Well, technically, one monoprint and one ghost print.  I had been given some interesting paper, just the right size for the inside of a pamphlet book, so...

A ghost print, if you're not familiar with the term, is the second print from any given monoprint plate. There isn't anything like the amount of paint left, hence the term 'ghost'. The texture of the second piece of paper, which holds the ghost print, is quite interesting.  I think, for once, I'll leave the white as it is, it works fairly well.  I don't have any more white at this size, which will make the book more interesting, I hope, though I will stick to pastel colours.  And because of the nature of a single signature pamphlet book, I will only add perhaps another two sheets, three at most.   There's a fair amount of work to be done before they are made into a book, though.  Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, there needs to be another monoprint made on the other side of the paper, because books are three dimensional (yeah, I know, I'm repeating myself...). And then the same with the other pages. Interestingly, fortunately and completely coincidentally, there's clear space on both sides of the print, allowing me to add words....hurrah... and that will have to be repeated throughout the book. 

So now, I need to work out how many pages, what the theme is (landscapes, I suspect, and possibly  Norfolk landscapes, more specifically), what the words are (I may already have a poem...but I think I have a different idea...so perhaps a new one).  And what the cover will be.  But it's a good start...and all because I didn't want to waste some paint.  See what I mean about ideas?  They're ten a penny.  All you have to do is pay attention.