I have finally got around to making a book. A very little one, but hand stitched and everything! I've been wanting to make one ever since I discovered the wonderful book binding tutorials on Moodle, filmed during lockdown on a canal boat. They're brilliant!
I got very carried away printing fern leaf textures from the lino that I etched with fern leaves coated in caustic soda and then I printed direct from the leaves and via a perspex plate on top. I had a lot of pages so I tore a few up and bound them into a book and then added some collage from the series on top.
The first flick through on the video is without collage, the second with. The collage completely changes it and makes it so much more interesting. I know a lot of printmakers use collage as a way of using parts of failed prints but I've always struggled with it. It's not a form of making that comes naturally to me. I hate covering things up so I find it much easier with translucent papers where the layer below still shows. I found it easiest to college the reverse sides, using the shapes and hints of colour to play off each other without feeling I was losing anything.
This was a really interesting experiment. It felt very free, it was simply making for the sake of it... to see what happened, to see how it worked, to see what it looked like and whether this might be something worth pursuing.
Recently I've felt very under pressure to make things 'for things'. There was the Woolwich deadline, then the miniprint deadline, then the Awagami deadline, then I got really brave and entered the IOPE at Bankside as well. I was buoyed by having a huge print accepted for Woolwich. Now all the deadlines are done and the prints submitted I felt I could relax a little and just make something fun for the sake of it.
I've realised I definitely have ebbs and flows with making... when I was meant to be writing the research paper I couldn't get away from my press, once that was handed in I started lingering around the computer a little more. I haven't had inky fingers for a couple of weeks now! (Other things have also been getting in the way like gallery visits and meet ups with course mates etc!)
I'm rather pleased with the book, I think this could be a really interesting way to explore textures and accidents, to make little things using the back as well as the front of the prints.