I have been doing a lot of paper cuts over the Christmas period and as my interest has grown I have been looking at the work of other artists. I also really enjoy and make artists books so you can imagine how excited I was when I came across the work of  Yusuke Oono, beautiful, wonderful little dreamscapes what a lovely idea.

360 degree book.

If you want to see more of this artists work visit

www.loftwork.com

Why don't you take a pair of scissors and a sheet of paper and see what you can do with these everyday materials this weekend! Whatever you do have a good one.

Midweek meander

Old books transformed into art what a wonderful concept, here are just a few, an insight into the minds of the artists.

Jacqueline Rush-Lee.

Ania Gilmore.

Jessica Drenk.

Johnathan Callan.

Visual story tellers.

On this Monday morning I thought that we could enjoy the work of two illustrators Gemeo Luis and Tesa Gonzalez.
Firstly Gemeo Luis who makes his imagery through beautiful and intricate paper cuts, these paper cuts make his work interactive and accessible as he not only uses them as book illustrations but as gallery installations, wonderful, see what you think.

Strange and inventive work.

Fancy a go? See more of this work www.gemeoluis.com

Now the work of Tesa Gonzalez, she is a children's book illustrator who also makes beautiful short animations to promote reading in schools.

Again beautiful and unusual work. More, yes please www.tesagonzalez.blogspot.com

Art is not what you see

but what you make others see.

Georgia O'Keef

So much fun.

My new poster, just thought I would show you, hope you think it does the job!

Well last Friday saw the last session of the contemporary bookmaking workshops, I can't believe it's passed so quickly, I have to say they were a great bunch. Teaching and learning is such fun when your working with creative, open minded folk eager to learn. A big Thanks to each and every one of them for making my job so pleasurable, and, all so generous and eager to share their knowledge with each other, an absolute delight.

They had all been gradually stretching there skills over the sessions so for the final one we decided to make three books in a box, quite a challenge in the limited time available, did they do it, of course they did. Brilliant! Now a confession from the teacher, I forgot to check that the batteries in my camera were charged, yep you got it they weren't so I can't actually show you much of the student work! However they have promised me that the will either bring it in or email me the pictures, so fingers crossed I can show you soon. Here's what I did get though.

All wrapped up.

The unwrapping.

The unfolding.

Three little books coming out to play.

Japanese stab binding.

Who could resist this handmade book it's just begging to be filled.

An idea that is developed and put into action

is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.

Edward De Bono.

Junk mail.

A treat for those of you who are fed up with bills, unwanted letters and all that annoying junk mail. I use mine to make fun books, very satisfying recycling all that stuff into something new, it saves me money and the outcome is something that I really enjoy using. Result! Gone are all those worries about the blank page, ruining an expensive sketchbook, gone the 'what shall I do in it', I am free to mess around in my free book, no worries.Here is one of the little devils that I've been working in, see what you think.

Here I have used the window in the envelope for a little window.

White envelopes, brown envelopes, it doesn't matter the more the merrier.

 

Fun aren't they, fast, free and funky. Here's how they are made.

Gather together all the junk mail that you want to use, fold the pages in half and cut open three sides of the envelope. Pile them up with the seams together and then stitch down the length of the fold. Ta dah one junk mail journal, couldn't be easier, go on you know you want too!

'A drawing a day keeps

the cobwebs away'.

Robert Genn.

Bookmaking.

Last week the students bought in some of the books that they had made during the previous session. The results are beautiful little books that are personal to each of them, it is really good to see the different interpretations and I thought that you might like to look at them.

Concertina Book with pockets. Heather McClure.

Handmade paper, stitch and insertions.

Another beautiful book from Heather. Flag book,

 constructed from the inside of envelopes. 

Flag book,

sorry I'm not sure which student made this, beautiful decorated papers.

Colour coordinated decoration, a lovely finishing touch. Shelia Russel.

                    Choices, choices! Keeping it natural, concertina book, Paula Allison.

Who wouldn't like to receive these beautiful little books!

This week we learned how to make a exposed spine book with stitched signatures. Signatures are groups of single sections, this means, one folded page is a single section, a signature is a group of sections placed one inside another.

Signatures with varying sized sections.

Don't these handmade paper pages look beautiful grouped together.

I hope that you have enjoyed looking at this work, most of the student have very little experience of bookmaking and have come up with these beautiful books, have a go yourself and I'm sure you will be pleased with the results that you achieve. There are some really good books on the market and plenty of information on the Internet. www.flickr.com/photos/katej/sets/72157625780349723/ www.papercurious.blogspot.com this blog is no longer active but is still available and is a good starting point.  Making your own sketchbooks and journals personalises your work even more and you get just what you want.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited.

Imagination encircles the world.

Albert Einstein. 

Learning and laughing.

Tags or luggage labels, what do you call them?

An Inked up Paper Tray cloth.

This week in the bookmaking class we were making a star tag book, this is relatively easy and a fun book to make. After a basic run through of the techniques we started off by markmaking with coloured inks onto thin absorbent paper. The results were to be loose and easy as they would end up being cut up as part of the construction of the book.                                                                                                   

Experimental Markmaking.

Lovely lively marks.

We coloured up the parcel tags, who would have thought such cheap and simple things could look so interesting. Maybe we should do this for gift tags they are so much more personal than the bought ones!

And, with a bit more work and concentration success was ours-Ta Dah!

Star Tag Book.

For those of you who want to have a go at making this for yourself I will give the instructions in the next post  so keep checking out the blog.

What feelings do your brushmarks, scrapings, scratchings,

drawing, calligraphy, type and other marks lend to your idea?

Margot Voorhies Thompson.