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A big, big book

For many years, the size of my artist books generally ran to about 3″ square. Manageable, I thought. The last few books have been closer to 5″ x 8″.

The project finished yesterday is 15″ x 19″. It felt something like trying to play the xylophone with my fingers, as though it were a piano. Over the winter break, I began helping the scrapbook committee of the high school Latin club to build a handmade scrapbook. We laminated two thickness of binder board together for both covers, and covered them with book cloth that we made with cotton, kozo paper and wheat paste. The front cover has 4 cutout windows, one with several waves cut into the bottom border. That was a covering adventure. My beloved Japanese screw punch was pressed (yuk yuk) into service for the post-and-screw binding. The punched spine pieces were turned in and a spine cover strip bound with the pages.

I wish I had thought to take a picture, but as soon as we finally got it finished I had to rush off to class.

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Spring has sprung

Yesterday the Japanese magnolia had only buds on it; today most of the buds have bloomed. So I walked back to the tulip magnolias that grow by the fence to the back pasture, to find that I’d almost missed them blooming entirely. The camellias — double and single blossoms — are budding and blooming together. Our place looks like a park. I practically expect to see one of the ladies from Cypress Gardens to appear in all her hoop-skirted, pastel finery.

I took these photos this afternoon with my new Canon digital camera. It’s cool. So far, I barely know how to use it.

Yesterday we had a dinner party for eight. A good time, good people, good food.

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February 14 — Finishing Things


This photo has double import for today.

First, and less obvious but still significant, the box upon which these books are displayed: this is the leftover Crane box from the 425 invitation addresses that were finished today! Yay!

Second, the books. I looked around the studio after the invitation addresses went out, and decided I could still make the artistbook swap deadline — if I got them done today and overnighted them, that is. I got right to work 🙂 No time for a new design, so I decided to do something I’ve done before, only with different covers. And I’ve never swapped these before.

Here are the books swaddled in wax paper and lying on my gridded cutting mat. I sent them off that way to ensure that the accordion folds closest to the covers didn’t stick to the covers in transit.

Oh, it’s fun to make books, even if the design isn’t new.

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New and improved business card (at least on paper)

I’m knee-deep in Illustrator and InDesign. Yesterday I used my new knowledge in these software programs to update my business card. It looks much sharper — in person, at least. I don’t know about on screen. This is basically the same design I’ve been using since about 1983. I keep thinking I’ll change it — at least update that rather lame 1983 attempt to copy Friedrich Neugebauer’s script for the word “Calligraphy” — but so far I’ve just tweaked it.

[After posting this I see that the thumbnail is incredibly fuzzy. But if you click on the thumbnail to get to the regular-size image, that image is clear. Must be the way Blogger creates thumbnails. I don’t know.]

In graphic design class on Monday we had a critique of our masthead design. I rather like mine.

In web design class we started an interesting project called “Shared Narrative”. Groups of 4 people decide on a narrative and each contribute 5 original images to the pool. Then we each create a narrative website using the story and at least 1 image from each member of the group. It reminds me of a challenge quilt event, in which quilters use the same 3 fabrics to come up with a quilt; usually, the results vary widely. I’ll be interested to see what happens in this project.

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Calligraphy, InDesign, Calligraphy, Dreamweaver, Calligraphy

Oh, for a few more hours in the day. But I’m enjoying it all. I’ll do a daily allotment of invitation addresses (did I mention there are 425 of these?), move to the computer and work on a graphic design assignment, switch back to the big drafting table to fill in some certificates, move back to the computer to tussle with Dreamweaver’s unfamiliar rendering of CSS rules, then back to the drafting table for some work on an artist book …

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, as my grandfather used to say.

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February 1 — Illustrator and Calligraphy

Today’s creative endeavor involved taking what I learned about Adobe Illustrator at the awesome demo during Wednesday’s class meeting and applying it to yesterday’s camera-ready calligraphy for a wedding invitation. I placed the Photoshop document in Illustrator and then Live Traced it to make a vector image. The first Live Trace was pretty much a bust because I didn’t change any of the preset settings.

But I kept experimenting with the settings and got something that looks pretty good at 100% even if it looks lousy at, say, 400%. I tried using the Smooth Tool, to transform bumpy lines into smooth curves, but I must have been doing something wrong there, or had a setting wrong somewhere. I succeeded on the entrance stroke to a J, shown above left but not on the straight bit. The right figure is part of a J elsewhere on the camera-ready, untouched. You can see the difference in the smoothness of the curve — but probably only if you click on the thumbnail and look at the image full size. And, on another note, wouldn’t it be nice if the thickness of that upstroke had a more gradual thinning so that there wasn’t some much thinness between the upstroke and the stem? A 400% view of lettering is way harsh, man.

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January 31 — camera-ready invitation

Well, this is work, but it’s also creative. I’ve been working on this camera-ready invitation for awhile now, and the time had come to finish it up, call it done, and send it in. So I did. And I’m much happier with it than I thought I’d be when I was working on it. I don’t have a lot of confidence in my pointed pen work, and swashes are for the very experienced penman only. Well, I’m experienced. And when I compare this to some of the swashed pointed pen invitations I see, I’m brilliant. And then I compare this to the work of our present-day master penman, and … well, that’s the way of the world now, isn’t it?

In today’s global village it isn’t possible fool oneself into thinking one is the best. On the other hand, we all have instant access to the very best models, which wasn’t possible until the Internet.

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January 29 – Thoreau redux

All right, here it is with the missing word and comma, and the last word corrected. (As usual, you can click on the thumbnail for a closer look.) I like it much better than yesterday’s attempt. I tightened the line spacing in the main text area, which made the quotation block hang together better and allowed more space for the bottom text to sit in its own space. I also did the names at the bottom smaller (which you can’t see, since I blurred them) and more condensed to make a more identifiable contrast between that and the quotation. And then I changed the flower to grow from the second half of the text rather than the first, so that each watercolor block is now connected to a block of text, rather than having both watercolor blocks connected to the first half of the text, and the second half of the text connected to … nothing. And besides the fact the flowers now able to grow more vertically, the main flower points back into the text rather than pointing out of the frame. Now all I’ve got to do is find a place to write the attribution (maybe in the grass?) and pop it in the mat.

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January 28 — Thoreau quotation

This Thoreau quotation was commissioned as a wedding gift. So I’ve blurred out the names and date. I like the quote, and I think I like what I’ve done with it. I’ll have to look at it awhile before I’m sure. The paper is Arches 70# hot-pressed watercolor paper. I don’t know why the scan resulted in seemingly gray paper behind the bottom half of the quotation. And now I realize that I’m going to have to re-do it. The last word should be “wonders”, not miracles. Oh well, it’s a good first draft. I have a few things I want to change anyway.