21/52 'small landscape' .....

This little book consists of four folios sewn into the cover with pamphlet stitch.  The spine was then covered with a hinge of black leather.  As is often the case my inspiration is drawn from extensive journeys into the Australian outback.  I used some of the rusted paper I had in the studio as it reflects so much of the true interior colour and then painted small landscape scenes with black ink.  A few small details were added either with fine black pen or white conte.  The book was surprisingly difficult to photograph and so only a few snippets are shown here.

20/52 'posted' .....

About five years ago my children visited Japan together, skiing I think, and Tim actually  came home with  a  number  of  perspex  boxes for me  which  he  had  purchased.   One of  them was/is  a  4 x 4 compartment box allowing for sixteen books to be displayed.  I have been waiting since then to come up  with  an idea  to  fill those spaces  and now that I am at week 20 of my 52  week  project,  I  have decided that sixteen of my books can be housed in this perspex framework.  

This is the first of those 16 to be housed (in fact it may be more as I may add multiples of books at a time) in this way.  I am anticipating that most of these books will be sculptural, or at the very least photograph worthy and not necessarily have artistic content inside the book.  This is quite rare for me as I have always used the 'book' as a vehicle for my artwork.

The book was made using cut down postcards with a simple coptic binding.  It is quite lovely to handle as it is small and fluid in the hand though I think that the photographs do it more justice than it deserves.

19/52 'sea urchins' - echinocorys .....

I confess that this 'book' is really just a drawing I was experimenting with in order to plan and prepare for a couple of large drawings in a similar vein.  I have finished one of the large ones - 1300mm x 720mm - but actually reduced the amount of defined detail as I didn't really like having such realistic work.

This smaller piece works quite well folded as a book as I can contain what I now see as 'realism' between the covers and only peep when necessary.  For years I have enjoyed making marks and suggesting, often obscurely, my work rather than making my drawing representational.  This means that very often no one understands my work even if they love it ..... hence my decision to introduce an element of realism back into my work.  I will actually post on these large drawings I am doing at a later point, but let me say now that I was really unhappy to actually see or recognise in my drawing, that which I was drawing!  Not sure that makes any sense other than to me.  As here in this book you can see the sea urchins even though they are not drawn in great detail - I find myself alienated from this work, enjoying the areas where I have not defined the subject far more so than the objects I have drawn. Blah!  A whole lot about nothing really.

I prefer suggestive work and some of these smaller snippets of photos, especially photographed from the backside of the film, to see are way more interesting that the drawing as a whole.

18/52 'counting letters' .....

Some books are all about the content and some are really all about the photographs.  This book falls into the latter category - I had such fun playing with the photos and think many of the images are more satisfactory than the actual book.

This book was begun about four years ago when I was taking part in Fiona Dempster's project 'A Letter a Week' - which meant that participating artists produced two alphabet books each year.  I think I made three and this, the fourth, sat half finished until now.  It gave me great joy to complete this book which was actually the first book or artwork in which I used my father's old letraset.  No one knew this of course as the book had been sitting on my desk alongside many other unfinished bits and pieces.  

There is not much to say about the book other than it was designed to have a slow reveal of the letters.  When the cover is opened you can only see three of the letters - 'a', 'g' and 'z'.  I have always enjoyed making books with this slow reveal.

The dimensions of the book are 420mm x 220mm which makes it the largest of the eighteen books I have made thus far in 2018.  Can't believe eighteen weeks have slipped by already.