The aim of this chapter was to create a concertina book / sketchbook and fill it with work created using just one colour, that is the same colour throughout. I chose to use blue green for this exercise. I also tried to revisit most aspects of the module.
I took a huge number of photographs throughout this exercise so have had to edit this number down dramatically.
Making the book
I started by making books from various sizes of paper from A1 to A3.
Since I'm not particularly fond of working small, I opted for A1 as the base paper, which gave a book with roughly A4 size pages.
Page 1: Mixing the colour
I began by making blue-green shades from a mix of various blues and yellows, adding white and black to make tones and shades.
Then I cut out rough leaf shapes and made a wreath shape to display the colours. I made a base paper for this using water colour wash and bubble wrap, although that may not show up to clearly in the photograph.
Page 2: Painting in colour shades and tones
The theme of the module had been harvest festival and I wanted to move on a little but remain with the natural theme. So I chose a simple tree shape as a base for my painting in colour shades and tones, revisiting chapter 2 in the module.
the two pages together
Page 3 and 4: Coloured paper
It occurred to me that this colour is very prevalent in Islamic / Arabic architecture and tile patterns. I had been really looking forward to making coloured papers again and thought designs using coloured papers would really fit the Islamic art idea. I made loads of blue green coloured papers using salt, resist, bleach, clingfilm, inks and watercolours as before, and had a thoroughly good time.
I started off looking at the idea of a cityscape for one page and quickly put together a domed doorway (using the doorway cut out elsewhere later on)....
....then started to arrange these on a colourwash paper base
On the facing page I made a dense pattern using tessellated shapes
The two pages together
I was very keen to revisit this technique as I had so enjoyed the simple printing techniques in the module. I used acrylics throughout
With page 5 I broke the rule of using only one colour in favour of a big splash of complementary red-orange as a base for a leaf shape.
I made prints, using acrylic paint on various coloured papers, then put 6 together to form a page for the book
And the two pages together
Pages 7 and 8
Back to basics with these two pages. Firstly a collage of blue green textures: butterfly wings, old rope, glass bricks, feathers, stone wall......
And then making marks on calico with textured wallpaper.
And the two together
Pages 9 and 10
Another page of collage, this time blue green tiles
And one of embroidery tiles
And the two together
Pages 11 and 12
I had thought to do a page of drawing and painting still life for these two pages but having enjoyed the printing so much I eventually decided to make a lino cut, something I haven't done for an awfully long time. So these two pages cover my prep work for a three layer lino cut. I used the tree theme again for this.
Some working pictures
Page 11 included my finalised design and layering using tracing paper.
Page 12, the rough print of each lino cut
And the two together
The two end pages
One of these included the final lino cuts,
And the other made use of coloured papers made with inks and the doors from the Arabic doorways
The book Tag
The whole thing together first one side
...then the other
