Blog Swap: Anna on Art Books

Hello, this is not your usual host. I am Anna Platz-Twells, an artist and writer, gatecrashing Mort’s blog to introduce you to the world of Art Books. As a writer, and therefore an avid reader, I love traditional books, vessels of fantastical stories and distant worlds. But I have also brought my love of books into my art practice.

By definition, an art book, or artist book, is any book created by an artist. But, the understanding of what constitutes as a book is questioned and expanded beyond the traditional form of flat page and writing. Ranging from Guy Bigland’s sleek published books filled with explorations with text to handmade paper structures folded by Hedi Kyle, art books can explore visual poetry to sculptural form. Materials can include various papers, ‘found’ images, wood and stones and glass. Artists draw, write and print on the surfaces, using photographs, ‘found’ text and images, and cut-out techniques to create their art objects. Some become sculptural pieces, and some are large tomes or miniature pamphlets. As long as there are ‘pages’ of some kind to turn, it can be categorized as an art book.

My main interest in art books is the inherent narrative value of the form. Even when the pages are folded in strange shapes, or the book is only 2cm tall, there is still an instinctive recognition of the shape and a desire to ‘read’ the contents. This interaction creates a more intimate relationship with the viewer, inviting closer consideration and personal interpretations. A Blizzard book, created by Hedi Kyle, holds removable cards in the pockets of the pages, which invites interaction and reordering. One of the joys of creating these forms is watching someone explore and try to understand the book, finding their own way of ‘reading’ it and finding their own meanings. In this way, it is quite a democratic form of art, as one need not know the contexts of art history or even the beliefs and intentions of the creator. Books can be explored at a personal level, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

The power of the art book lies also in the experimentation beyond the flat surface. The folds and formats can distort and abstract images and can place text into different contexts. The Turkish map fold, for example, creates a variety of peaks and valleys on the surface, and the page unfurls like a flower revealing a secret. The multiple layers and sides can act as various threads of the same story or message, all brought together in a book. The shape of the book itself can refer to the contents, bringing together form and function in a blend of art and craft. Artist Emily Martin says that the format of the book should “reflect, enhance or actually embody the content of the work.” An example of this would be my book “Loose Threads”, which contains fragments of various stories I have written, bound with several threads tied together.

But the most important question remains; Where to start? Art books are an exciting, and oft overseen, avenue of art to explore and can lead down a rabbit hole of healthy obsession. But this all begins with seeing how it is done.

The first type of art book I ever came across was a squash fold book, during my Art Foundation course. The workshop involved photocopying pieces of our work and then folding and sticking them in the squash fold method. The art was transformed from a flat surface to this strange construct that could be read page-by-page like a book or hung, unfurled and displayed like a sculpture, giving the work a new context and meaning. This simple fold kick started my delve into book making, seeing how else the flat surface can be transformed.

However, a folded page or even an original image is not needed to get started with book making. Here, I take inspiration from a workshop I attended, hosted by Steve Micalef. This workshop looked at the ‘zine’, which is a form of handmade and art magazine. It can be stapled together or made using a simple magazine fold. Steve Micalef was involved in the making of ‘Sniffin Glue’, the first punk fanzine. Fanzines grew up alongside the punk movement, where the music lacked mainstream mention, written on typewriters in smoke-filled bedrooms, scribbled over with markers, with print and photos cut from magazines. Spelling was not a concern, and nor was neatness. The originals were photocopied, stapled together and distributed to punk fans.

This idea can be brought into book making, using ‘found’ text and images from magazines and print-outs. When starting, artist Alisa Golden says to “ask yourself two questions: ‘What do I want to make?’ and ‘What do I want to say?’”. Keep this in mind and get to cutting out letters, words and pictures.

There are also many places online that can further your inspiration. The YouTube channel ‘Sea Lemon’ offers multiple guides to sewn book forms. Artist Hedi Kyle has made public many of her inventive folds, such as the Blizzard book, the panel book and the fishbone fold, which can be found online. The Instagram account ‘Are You Book Enough’ is home to a monthly book making challenge and community of book makers.

Art books are a niche but expansive world, which I have only scratched the surface of, in both this post and my experience. There are many ways to tell a story, through words, images and the form itself, which are open for endless exploration. I hope I have inspired you to take a closer look into art books yourself, and wish you luck as you dive in. If you want to see more of my work, come over to my blog and take a look at my website and my Instagram.

Note from Mort: I hope you've thoroughly enjoyed having someone else's voice on my blog! Anna's work with book making is always a pleasure to watch, I was on video call with her one time and she made the TINIEST book I've ever seen. Please check out her other work using the link above!! I have also gatecrashed Anna's blog, you can read the post here

The Final Stretch - Evaluative Blogs #7

After a lot of debating back and forth with tutors, we decided that the orange and blue colour palette didn't work for the Yeti and Loch Ness Monster and so I developed a different palette which kept the same blues to tie them all together. I think this worked well as they all work as a set, but are different enough to stand individually. At this point, the overall designs were approved by Y and I could start putting the final pieces together! This involved preparing the backgrounds on the lightbox, the gradient needed for Mothman took a couple of attempts as my brush upkeep has been a little lacking and the first wash had bristles all over it, and the colours weren't quite right. Below are the samples that I used:

I prefer the samples of textures to the painted backgrounds, I have much more control over the paint when I don't have lines to follow and it definitely shows. I think that there are still problems with the technique I use for painting the big backgrounds as the paper (both the watercolour paper and the printer paper underneath with the lines on) buckles, and the resulting piece doesn't line up correctly with the digital line. It's maybe worth thinking about adopting the same technique I have for the characters wherein I have a flat digital colour with the texture superimposed - rather than watercolouring it outright. Or perhaps the fact that it doesn't line up gives my work some charm?

Anywho, once I'd put all the watercolours in, I realised that the line was too thin and so I utilised a handy little Clip Studio tool which thickens the line for you - easy fix. Also, Mothman's background looked more like a sunset rather than light pollution and so I experimented with layer effects and gradients until I landed with something that resembled my reference photos. Loch Ness and Yeti were okay, the challenge with them would come later when printing as purple often translates into pinker tones. The Devil, on the other hand, needed a little reworking. Y and S both agreed that the bushels in the background weren't believable enough and asked me to return to my references and rework it - this turned out to be easier than I thought. Once the line was sorted, I transferred the image into Photoshop and used a mixture of the stamp and spot healing tools to move the paint around to fit the new lines, it was a successful operation I think. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough foresight to save the unedited versions so you'll have to use your imagination, or refer back to the image at the beginning.

And there we have it, four finished pieces! Now all that's left is to create the supporting statement and submit them for the Batsford Prize! I've learnt a lot from this project. Mainly that you have to push your initial ideas really far to get the most out of them, these pieces have definitely evolved from my concept sketches in the depths of my sketchbook - critical thinking has been crucial in the success of the project. Some times you have to go back to go forwards, and that definitely helped, especially with the Loch Ness and Yeti compositions - they have changed the most throughout this process, and they are better for it.

I appreciate you reading this far,

see you next time,

Mort

Cryptids and Climate Change! - Evaluative Blogs #6

So, as semester two started I received advice that I needed to organise myself better, and so I bought a diary (it's got rainbow pages, it's brilliant) and planned my semester. I wrote down all the deadlines for both university and competitions and worked my way backwards. The first thing that needed to be finished was my submission for the Batsford Prize on the 31st of March, next would be my submission for the International Comic/ Manga Schools Contest 2020 on the 27th of April which is also formative assessment - leaving Project Razor to fall into the background for the time being as the only deadline for that is the final show in May.

Now, onto the reason I'd hope you read these blogs - the art!

My time has exclusively been spent tending to the Batsford Prize, with the theme of 'our planet' it was time for my connections made through graphic facilitating to come to centre stage. The man whom I'd drawn for on that day was giving a talk on climate change, its implications, and solutions and so, even though my friend and I were very obviously not the engineering crowd, we went and soaked up all the information. This then gave me a springboard from which I dove into deeper research, more specific to my project - how mythical creatures and cryptids were going to not cope with climate change. I decided that the Loch Ness monster, Yeti, Mothman, and Jersey Devil would be a good selection and would allow me to address different aspects of climate change and pollution. From there I sketched out some ideas, scanned the best ones onto my laptop and sharpened them up.

Individually I thought they were all okay. I was pleased with the Jersey Devil and the concept behind Nessie (I thought I was real smart there). However, I wasn't sold on the Yeti, although it was a lot better than most of the sketches before that point, and I was sceptical about Mothman as I'd not spent too long drawing him - an idea thrown together in a matter of seconds.

Looking at them with S, we agreed that Nessie's composition - although more conceptual - didn't fit in with the others and so I went back to my sketchbook and brought out another composition where Nessie was instead dealing with drought. This worked much better as it had an element of background that would tie in with the others. With the Jersey Devil, I needed to play around with the positioning of the animals around him - if you don't know, the Jersey Devil feeds on the blood of livestock (kind of like an el chupacabra) - and S felt that the sheep in the foreground was perhaps too morbid and needed to be humoured up a bit, I played around with the body language even though I thought that it was plenty funny already (I have a strange sense of humour I know). It was unclear what the Yeti was doing, tiptoeing on the snowless ground wasn't going to cut it, and we agreed that I needed to incorporate an aspect of the Himalayas for it to make more sense and again tie in with the others better. Mothman was oddly S's favourite, she liked the symmetrical nature of the composition and although she liked the pose, Mothman himself was too small and didn't look 'caught in the headlights' enough. Moving forward, I hoped to resolve all of these issues and provided a couple of options (with the exception of Mothman) for S to review a few days later.

The Yeti was now starting to pose a problem, it still wasn't clear what he was scared of - the trees? the height? I was going to have to go back to the drawing board. I wasn't pleased with him in the slightest and was beginning to get frustrated as I'd wanted to get these finished quickly to allow more time for the other projects. The first Nessie was better as she was towards the 'audience' and her face was easier to see, however, her worried expression wasn't coming across. S prefered the Devil facing outwards, however, I wasn't so sure and the animals still needed tweaking, and Mothman was now too big!

I got these corrections done quite quickly and decided to start looking at colour to prevent myself from becoming demotivated. I was now much happier with the yeti, he now seemed to be part of his environment and it was clearer what he was doing. Mothman was a better size but I wasn't sure if I was happy with his arms yet. I'd tried to adjust the animals with the Devil to make the different levels more obvious, although looking at it now, the foreground sheep's belly shouldn't be touching the cow at the bottom of the pile, and Nessie still felt like she was lacking something but I couldn't put my finger on it. Anywho, the first attempt at colour roughs:

I decided to tackle Nessie first as I knew she was the weakest overall and thought that colour could add something to it - but really if your drawings can't stand by themselves colour certainly isn't going to save them, which it didn't. I was trying to add a sense of environment with the choppy edges of the ground, I can't say that it worked too well and I didn't particularly like any of the results that I'd produced. Let's just brush that under the carpet and move on.

I decided to turn to my Colour Index books for inspiration and found a couple that I wanted to try here. At the time I thought the last one was the bee's knees, but I'd become too caught up on focussing on where the light was going to hit that it was squandering any progress, the colours - although they go together - weren't correct for this project.

And so we come to the tried and tested blue and orange colour scheme. I absolutely adore this colour combination - I'd tried my best to stay away - but if it's not broken don't fix it I guess. I learned here that you should only use the Colour Index books as a starting point as demonstrated in the first outcome, I began to tailor the scheme to the composition and I'd landed on something that I wasn't horrified with. And so I took it forward.

None of them are awful or wonderful, I favoured the middle one, the colours seemed slightly more balanced than the other ones. Although, in the first one, the focus does go to the devil straight away as blue sends things backwards. I think in the last one, the colours became too varied and muddled the focus too much. All good points to keep in mind once the roughs were discussed with a tutor once again. This time I spoke to Y, as a fresh set of eyes, she was able to suggest things that S and I hadn't seen. Like me, she prefered the devil facing inward, and she also prefered the original sheep - she actually laughed out loud, hooray! She agreed that Nessie was the weakest and suggested that I add an essence of the Loch's scenery, simple I know but when you've been staring at the same pictures for weeks you miss the most basic of things - and to make her neck wind around the foreground a little more. For Mothman, Y suggested that I go back to my research and inform the composition more, I knew that cities were the centre of light pollution so why hadn't I drawn that? She loved the Yeti, however, he was FAR too small compared to the others - time to scale up.

At the moment, I think that the negative space in the Jersey Devil is interesting, and the picking of teeth perhaps works better than him belching - it may need some exaggerating in the final roughs but it's almost there. I know what I said about drawings standing on their own earlier, but my plan for Mothman is to have an orange/yellow dome of colour to symbolise the reach of the light pollution. The yeti is perhaps too big now, but that is easily sorted, and Nessie is looking stronger. The addition of the Loch's scenery in the background helps immensely - although I won't be using that particular brush in clip studio for lining again, but it's good to test these things out while you can.

And so this is currently where I stand. Hopefully, I'm nearing the end of this project. I've loved it, don't get me wrong, there are simply other projects for which the deadline is beginning to loom, and I'd like to do my best with everything.

Thanks for reading this far!

See you next time,

Mort