Paper and Threads

 Making a Coptic Book from a Thrift Store Book: 

I bought this 8 X 11" book for $2 at a New York City thrift shop so I could try converting it into a Coptic book with watercolor paper.

I removed the page block and the book board inside the book cloth in the spine.  I cut the spine book cloth down the middle, folded it to the inside, and glued it in place.  Seven holes were punched in the front and back covers and I sewed in 4 signatures of 140 lb watercolor paper.  I plan to use this book for more watercolor painted figures.

A Quilted Book Cover for a 6 X 8" Notebook:  Quilting Arts Gifts Magazine from Holiday 2011-12

This is another book idea that I liked, and I finally made it this past weekend.  It is a quilted cover with front and back cover pockets for pens, index cards, and extra papers. The taxi fabric is the pocket.  Here is the front.

Here is the back:

Here is the inside of the front cover:

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Yesterday was my first day this summer at Battery Park Figure Drawing.  The heat wave broke temporarily and it was cool and breezy sitting in the South Cove.  The model wore a strapless, flowing dress, making it hard to see her form.  Here are a few of my drawings.

One Minute Poses:

Five Minute Poses:  I used a General Sketch and Wash pencil and added water. The slightly buckled paper did not scan well.

Ten Minute Pose:  My first attempt drawing a live model with my paintbrush and watercolor.  This was the only one worth showing.

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We are in the middle of a heat wave, and I prefer being in air conditioning as much as possible.  I am taking Mary Ann Moss's summer fun class called SEWN, in which we are making patterns on paper and then using those painted sheets in various projects. 

This week I made a book for the pattern sheets that I created in Central Park each morning over the July 4th holiday.  I wanted to remember those mornings and wanted to save the paper - intact.  So I had to design a book structure that let me put them in without punching holes in the pages.  I accordion folded paper, every 1/2", making 5 valley folds and glued the left edge of the pattern pages to the right side of the valley - like you do for flag books.  Then I made two covers and stitched the accordion between them using the Coptic stitch/accordion format.  Two more pages of patterns were used for the end papers and a few random small pages were collaged onto the backs of the other pages. This book measures 7.5 x 11".

It felt good to know that I'm really learning how to make and use the various book structures for handmade books.  Here are a few photos.  The covers were made from more sheets of my paste paper.  This paste paper design was created by rolling a pink rubber ball over the surface of the paper.

This week I also made a pamphlet stitched book of watercolor paper using the basic instructions for Teesha Moore's 16 page book.  It uses a single 22 x 30" sheet of watercolor paper and creates an 8 x 10" portrait  book.  I modified the instructions for our second weekly SEWN project - and created octagons of my patterns mixed together with scraps of other papers left over from end papers etc.  I laid out two octagons on the book cover, filled in the surrounding areas with more scraps and stitched it all together on my sewing machine. 

I will use this book for more figure drawing practice - drawing with my paintbrush, so I put a print of my first few figures on the front and inside flap.  Then because I've never done it before, I added beads, as dangles, on the spine.

Readers of this blog may know that my challenge this year was to explore one new bookbinding structure each month.  This is a photo of the books I made since January 1, 2013. 

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This week I decided that I finally had to try drawing figures with paint, instead of pencil. 

I go to figure drawing approximately once per month and I feel more comfortable drawing figures with 9B graphite pencils than I did several years ago.  But I watch some of the other artists using only brush and paint.  How was I ever going to develop this skill? 

 It is hard to start something new when I am doing timed poses - in a group setting, so I decided to begin practicing at home.   I used the large Niji waterbrush and my wood, articulated artist's model.  And when I finished, my figure looked like a wooden statue!  Not shown!!

The next day I switched to the small Niji waterbrush and sketched from photos in my Mark Edward Smith's book The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist.   Here are practice figures 2-4 - one done each of the next 3 days.  Each one took approximately 10 minutes.

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I'm posting a few of the drawings I did at the Society of Illustrators on July 9th.  One of our models was Blaine - the same very tall man who I sketched two previous times.  He has extremely long arms, legs, and fingers and can get into the most challenging positions.  I sometimes can't keep his arms on the page - so these are a few of the easier poses.

Five Minute Poses:

Ten Minute Poses

Our woman model wore a Carnival Mask - which she then gave to Blaine for the next pose:

Twenty Minute Pose:

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