Art journals, to me were something else, I thought they should be full of drawings or collages or mixed media whatever and should have a LOT of pages. I usually think that when I am making a journal I should put a whole lot of pages in it. After all, if I am going to fold and sew and make a cover etc I should have it to work in for a long time, right? Well I just figured out that. for me, is WRONG!!! I have a zillion quarter/half full art journals sitting around. A few drawings that went nowhere, or a few that I liked and a lot of empty pages.
This time I tried something new. I had about 50 pages of prints from a gelli plate session, mostly printed on one side only. They just didn't make the cut as standalone prints. They hung around for a bit. (In my studio they could easily have hung around FOREVER!!) Some were just small pages, about 4" by about 6", some were about 7" x 11". I folded them all in half, so if there was a recognizable image on the page, the image was folded in half and made them into groups. I mixed up sizes so there were both sizes in each group, and made 4 books, Most were 9 sheets folded in half so about 18 pages, 36 sides. I didn't add covers or anything but a pamphlet stitch binding. Originally I thought if I finished all of them I would tie them together in some way and then make a cover. I'll see what happens with that later.
I started early in June of this year and today, September 14th, I finished the last page. They all have something on them that I feel is complete and I am willing to move on and start another one. SO! this is the book, page by page. Some got done in one sitting, some went through several iterations, and when I documented it, I will give you a serial view. Lots of links, lots of pictures, I didn't do these in order, though I did several in sequence I think the first one done was page 4, so there is NO sequence other than how they are bound now and how they relate to each other across the fold,. That relating across the fold is very interesting to me, and if I rebind these as one book someday that relationship will remain the same.
Finally, I only use my own photos or drawings or stencils or stamps that I have made. so though I will manipulate the daylights out of a photo, the original photo is mine with one exception, which I will mention on the page that uses it.
See what you see here:
This is page 1, or the temporary cover. It is a calendar square that I did a while ago, blown up and printed onto a transparency. I did it to make a transfer but the transparency that I used would not release the ink, so this one got cut up and glued here. This page was blank to start.
Pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are in this post. They were done over several days, I occasionally dated them but somehow that got lost after the first few. There were few changes, I know I added some thin lines on page 7 after it sat there for a while, but the images at that link are how the pages look now.
Pages 8, 9, 10 and 11 are in this post. These also are prettymuch unchanged from when I declared them done the first time.
Pages 12 and 13 are here. The Longevity embossed paper was made from the top of a condensed milk container that I bought in Chinatown ages ago. When I used the milk I saved the top and used it to deboss the word onto paper when I was playing one day. The leaf is from one of my orchids, which was shedding like mad but has survived.
Now we get to where some things started to change. Pages 14, 15, 16 and 17 are here.
14 is the only image that did not start with my photos or prints or whatever. I tore it out of something years ago and it floated to the top of the pile while I was looking for something. It was originally a halftone black and white image of Rich's in downtown Atlanta, which is probably why it stayed with me all this time. Of these 4 pages, number 16 now looks like this as opposed to the bare look it has in the linked page.
I added color in a trial at integrating it better with page 14, not sure it is successful, but interesting thought. Later you'll see the page that suggested doing this.
Pages 18, 19 20 and 21 are here. They have changes. and 19 now looks like this:
and page 20 now looks like this:
I really like the changes on these two, especially since they were not my favorites during the process.
OK, I will finish tomorrow. The rest have a lot more documentation of before and after and I am going to try a couple of collages to see how that will work to show the progression.
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