More workshop prep

These books are some examples I have put together for my forthcoming workshop in Ballarat, all the paper has been made using the mould and deckle that will be made in class. We will have a theme for the artist book that we will produce and I am thinking along the lines of flight but we will do some brainstorming once the class is underway. There are still a few spots available but it starts in less than three weeks so I had better get back to making pulp!

Rainbow Wings
recycled abaca and mount board, shaped, embossed sheets Coptic binding

Natural
Mixed plant fibre with cotton paper and ginger-lily, nature printing, W binding

Gitan
Recycled mount board and abaca, shaped sheets and hand written text, toji binding

Snappish were having a sale on photo books so I made one of my artist books, I will be selling these in Ballarat along with the more expensive Blurb books that I put together that include my binding instructions. 

The new books, 20 pages hard cover (will be $15 each)

The other book, soft cover 32 pages ($40 each) with instructions for ornament, 2 needle Coptic,  oriental,  W,  piano hinge and long stitch bindings as well as notes on paste and scraper papers.

Open Drawer Classes

I have been teaching a range of classes for Open Drawer in the last month and a half and it is the last class tomorrow. We will be making scraper paper and soft cut print blocks tomorrow, the first session we did nature dyeing/printing and the second session involved playing with indigo and rust. I had already made lots of books with the nature printing but since the indigo workshop I have made quite a lot of books with indigo and rust dyeing. The covers are scans of one particular sheet that I have printed onto bookcloth and each section contains one sheet that has been dipped into indigo or rust or both.

Last class we made paste papers and stamps and one of the participants asked what could you do with the paste papers so in the last week or two I have been playing with the papers and came up with a few ideas.

Two of the stamps I made

Pillow gift boxes

Gift box

Gift bag

Book covers

Yummy papers

Yummy papers

Yummy papers

Yummy papers

Yummy papers

Yummy papers

Picture frame

Lidded box

Lidded box

Europe and workshops

I am about to go to Europe for the IAPMA Congress that is happening next month in Fabriano, Italy at the Museo della carta e della filigrana. I have just finished putting together a catalogue for the members show and am putting the finishing touches together for both my travel plans and those for husband and daughter who will be travelling in Italy while I am at the congress. I will be visiting Paris for the first time and Netherlands and Italy for the second, it will be Mike's first trip to Europe.

From the week after I get back I will be teaching a series of workshops for Open Drawer on decorative papers.

A series of classes looking at ways of getting pattern and colour onto paper.

4 x 3 hour workshops $60 each payable to Open Drawer

Time: 12.30 – 3.30pm

Friday July 25th:    Natural Dye and Print

Make marks onto paper using a range of natural materials including tealeaves, gum leaves, ferns, berries and a range of metals. Some great effects can be achieved.

Bring along a range of leaves from your garden

Material Fee $6 includes: paper and other materials needed – payable to Gail on the day

Friday August 8th:    Indigo and Rust

Learn how to set up an indigo vat for dyeing paper (and fabric) to a range of beautiful blues. Also learn about rusting paper using readily obtained chemicals then combine the two processes to achieve some wonderful effects.

Material Fee of $10 includes:  paper and chemicals – payable to Gail on the day

Friday August 22nd:   Paste Papers

Get back to kinder with some finger painting. Use a range of tools to create beautiful patterns on paper using paste and colour.

Material Fee $10 includes: all materials needed for workshop

Friday September 5th:   Scraper Paper

Get some wonderful effects on paper using acrylic paint and a scraper of some sort, a great use for old plastic gift cards.

Bring along a spray bottle and at least three tubes of acrylic paint (Jo Sonya works well, anything that is not too thin) including one metallic colour. Please also bring disposable gloves and wear an apron.

Material Fee $6 includes: all  Paper - payable to Gail on the day

Playing with Paste and Paint

I am teaching a workshop at the end of January at Open Drawer in Hartwell, it is going to three days and the theme is sculptural books. It is basically the same as the workshop I ran in Hobart last month and includes a different decorative technique at the start of each day. Included are scraper paper, paste paper and pressure paper. I needed some samples so I made up about 300 ml of cornflour paste by mixing 2 coffee spoons to a paste with cold water then dumping boiling water on and stirring like crazy. I added a teaspoon of glycerine and a drop of detergent because I had them and to aid with the flow of the paste. I then strained this paste into 4 separate containers and coloured one red, one blue, one yellow and one gold with acrylic paints. I proceeded to paste away on dampened 130 gsm cartridge paper. My favourite tools were some adhesive spreaders with different teeth and a credit card. I did try out some stamps that I'd bought and some that I'd cut from erasers and a couple of Indian wooden stamps. I worked on a sheet of brown paper and at the end of the session combed that too.

The brown paper

The first batch of papers

The second batch, I also worked over some earlier ones with different coloured paste and got some great results. At the end of the first session I mixed the red and yellow and the blue and gold and came back the next day to do some more.

Two layers with the wide comb

medium comb and credit card

Credit card

Credit card and ruler

Narrow and medium combs

Wide comb

wide comb

End of fork and hand carved eraser.

I finally finished off the paste this morning and got 50 A4 sheets plus the brown paper from my 2 tablespoons of paste.

I also needed to build up my supply of scraper paper since I used most of my previous stock on my Christmas cards. These are sooo easy to make, just run some acrylic paint along the top of a sheet of paper and scape it down getting it quite thin, an old credit card is good to use as a scraper though you can also use any paint scraper. I first read about this technique on the web but unfortunately didn't keep the reference and don't seem to be able to find it now.

Anyway you run two or three layers of paint on top of each other not allowing them to dry in between and finish up with a metallic, (I mostly use Jo Sonya but other acrylics work fine too) then spray with water and leave for a couple of minutes. Then scrape off the excess water and paint. Not wanting to waste any paint this scraping is usually the start of my next page, the more random the better. This paper can be used for covering books and boxes and for decorating cards.

Napthol red light and opal

Napthol red light, aqua and silver

Brilliant magenta, brilliant green and gold

Napthol red light, burnt umber and copper

Phthalo blue and silver

Collographs, Paste paper and classes

Firstly just a little plug for the book class I'm starting next Saturday. I'll be teaching a four week class from 10.30 am - 1 pm Saturdays May 1 -22. It is at St Stephen's Community Living Centre, 28 Freeman Street, Ringwood East. You can see more and book at their website

http://www.ssclc.websyte.com.au/

These are the pieces I submitted to the 69 Smith Street stand at Art Melbourne along with the cormorant picture I've just had framed.

They are Tesselation Part Two cast dyed gingerlily on a lino print. Part of an installation I did for Natural Connections an Exhibition I had with Ann Parry back in 2002.
The next three can be one piece or three separate pieces called Journey - Korea, King Island, Milne Bay and combine pulp painting with digital imagery.


 

Tomorrow I am going to my daughter's school to show her year 12 class some of my artist books and to teach them a couple of binding styles, I decided to give them some paste paper to cover their concertina's with and I had some brownish paper that I didn't have a particular use for so decided to use it for gold paste papers, they are pretty simple just gold acrylic in cornflour paste and a range of tools for the designs.

I've also been playing around with some collographs, I didn't get to the workshop that Liz Winter ran for Papermakers but saw some of the results, I particularily liked the effect of eggshells so was keen to try them out. T'arts was at my place last Sunday so I thought we'd have a go at making some collographs, talk about the blind leading the blind, I hadn't realised the eggshells would be so difficult to stick. The top picture shows the plate I made on Sunday with the print, the next shows an earlier one I'd made and a couple of prints, since the T'arts is a textile group I did one print on one of my calico couching cloths to see how it would work on fabric, was fine, might be interesting with some embroidery/beading.


The third picture is of some extra plates I made from flattened corrugated cardboard, thin card and egg shells this time I took the easy option and used some of my wide double sided tape.