Some (Interesting) Excuses and Pages 10-13

I'm really sorry that it's been so long, but I got really into some minimalist paintings the past few weeks. The very first I created for my oil painting course; my class was working on landscapes at the time and as I approached my final painting (last out of 3), I decided to approach it differently by using stencil-like layers to create an image. However, after I put down my first two mid-tones for the Earth and sky, I realized I didn't have time to put down anything else over top of them because the oil paint was not dry. Looking closer, I found that I really liked the extreme minimalism of the piece and decided to give it a shot and show it to my class during the critiques. The painting was embraced completely by my peers and my professor, which inspired me to make many more.

This one was my first, which I called "Deserted" because it looks like a desert and it symbolizes my act of deserting the classical landscape entirely. The brown started on the bottom during critique, but as my class discussed it, I turned it upside down, which provoked a different feeling than the original way had that I preferred.
The piece is 2 feet by 3 feet, and I mixed both of the colors myself.

Then came my two smaller pieces; they're both _____  and experiments with different color swatches I found on http://www.colourlovers.com/.

This one is my most recent one. I'm really excited about these because I'm really into flat colors and making everything about a painting perfect - I find this a great outlet for that. And I'm thinking about transferring this idea to my future prints because it would be very simple to duplicate.








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 Now finally to the sketchbook!

 Page 10 was done during Art History class: the professor says "kind of" in front of everything, stutters and makes a "t" sound while he talks which gets rather irritating sometimes.
During that particular class, I was introduced to a group of peoples in the Papuan Gulf who make gope boards. This sparked a printmaking idea and the planning for it is on the bottom of page 10.

 Page 11 is mostly a sketch of my cat sitting on her favorite chair. :3
The rest of the page is a rubbing from the front of a library book and some planning for an oil painting.









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 Page 12 is a study of a still life I found at the Figure Drawing studio (the model was doing any interesting poses that day - all sitting).
The rest is some oil paint tube sketches, class notes about very influential artists, and some writing.

Close up of my still life study. Thought I did a great job on it. :)

Pages 6-9

It's been rather cloudy the past few days and I have been relying on the sun for lighting my photos, so today was the first day I could capture these pages properly.

On pages 6-7, I was sitting in the printmaking studio for most of it. The green pen is an air vent (with a stuffed toy monkey hanging from it) and the bottom right corner is part of a lithography press with a solvent bucket underneath. The rest, in pencil, is a still-life made of random stuff I found in my friend's room. :)

 Close up of my little still-life. I was really happy with the orange juice carton and the fork.

 Close up of the press and solvent can. Some of the lines aren't at the right angle, but I was really excited about how I used the colored pencils that I had on me. All I had were electric green, bright blue, red, green, purple, and gray. I put a little pencil in there too.





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 Most of pages 8-9 are from the figure drawing sessions I attend weekly, there's the pitcher again!, and the top right corner is what my next lithography print is going to be of. I found the sheet music in the Music Building on campus because I was bored. The stamped face on page 8 wasn't that successful, so I tried covering it up with some Japanese papers I got a long time ago. I'm not that happy with it, but I can't really do anything about it now. :P

I was really excited about this figure! I played off the way I created the printing press on the previous page - had the same colors too. I also loved how the figure fit across the page like it did. :3 The only thing I'm not that satisfied with is the hanging arm - it doesn't feel attached or like it's hanging.

My next lithography print is going to be drawn in the touche wash method, which is like ink wash except with grease. (Would've given a link, but I couldn't find anything.) I'm going to probably work similar line-work from this sketch into the final because I liked it so much, but the majority will be different toned washes, especially the background.

 (And I must point out if it hasn't been noticed already for everyone to take advantage of the zoom on these photos! It's really cool.)

Pages 4-5

 So far in my oil painting class this semester my professor has had everyone paint still-lifes. I got bored painting one night and decided to draw the current still-life. I really loved the composition/position of the objects and I'm in love with the pitcher in the middle. I will probably draw it again. :) The thing in the corner is a cut-out from a piece of wallpaper I found, the red tick marks are from knitting a sock (had to keep track of my rows), and the text on the right is notes from oil painting (looking at artists who paint landscapes).

Close up of the middle still life.
And you can see that there are drawings on the other side, so expect another post soon.

Pages 1-3 and Back Endsheet

Now I get to start showing you the inside of the book. :D The first page I wanted to have the name of the sketchbook. I don't like to draw on the very first page for some reason. Never have. (The blue line on the pages is just tape to keep the book open - nothing that's supposed to be there.)

These are the first two pages. The writing at the top right and the boxes at the bottom left is me planning a lithography piece, the colorful thing at the top is a hat I'm planning on making (color scheme specifically), and the rest is self-explanatory.








Close ups of my orange and Dana Jayne.

And then I created the logo for Irving Stone Press. It's really simple, but I enjoy really simple logos. I'm going to eventually make a stamp for it to brand all of my books with. Another idea is that each logo for each book is different - can't decide which.







So, that's been progress so far this week. I'm going to be drawing a lot this afternoon, so there should be more soon.

The Books

Just successfully took pictures of my 2 hardbound sketchbooks. My family shares a really old, ugly camera, but the pictures turned out alright.

Naked and Monolith

 In this picture, the left one is the one I'm beginning with. When I took these pictures I noticed that the black one looks like the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I'm naming the black one after it. The other I'm calling "Naked" because my brother came down and mentioned it - found it entertaining and appropriate. ;)

Each book was sewn together and made up of 10 signatures (bookbinding term definitions at the bottom); each signature is made of 6 folios. The structure of both are entirely the same internally - the only difference is one's completely bound and the other is spineless. The benefit of a spineless book is that it lays flatter when you open it.  

More details about Naked: None of the paper inside is brand new: they're made up of newsprint I've used over the years since high school, white paper ripped from another sketchbook I never finished, road maps, and other toned papers I found around my house. (You can see all the different papers more clearly in the bottom pictures.) I didn't want to start with new paper when I knew that there was plenty I could use; makes me feel good to reuse things.

the spine and opposite edge of Naked

After sewing all the signatures together, I glued the spine to protect it using a bookbinding glue, glued the ribbons to the top of the cages, and then glued the end-sheets to the inside. Between each gluing I had to put other large books on top to keep the cage from bending. (When I get to Monolith, I'll tell you how I did that too.)

So, then I had a book. :D And now I'm going to start drawing in him.

 I will post my first pages soon.





TERMS
folio: large folded piece of paper
signature: sewn stack of folios
bookbinding glue: Jade 403 - PVA adhesive
cage: fancy word for the cover
text-block: the stack of many sewn signatures
end-sheet: paper glued to the inside of the book to further attach the cage to the text-block

How to Start?

Hey, my name's Shlee. This will be the start of my very first blog and I am very excited. :D I have been mulling the idea for a sketchbook blog for years, but I never had the resources (laptop) or the sketchbook that I felt I wanted to share. My boss's wife, Martha, teaches a bookbinding course at the University of Delaware and she found time recently to show me how to make my own sketchbook (something I've dreamed of since high school). I just finished 2 small, 5.5x7x1.5, hardcover sketchbooks yesterday and 4 larger, 9x12, softcover sketchbooks earlier this week. I want to start with my small spineless sketchbook (Martha showed me how to make both and I'll give you more of a rundown of the structure in later posts).

Origins of the idea: I rigorously keep a sketchbook with me at all times and try to draw in it as much as possible, but most of the time it's not as much as I would like. Again, I've always wanted to have a sketchbook that I created; something that I could say: "I made this - this is totally mine." I got the opportunity to do that recently, so one goal has been reached, but I have also wanted a means to share my sketchbooks with more people. Blogging was the original idea, but I never got a chance to start one. This semester I purchased a laptop, so the dream became more of a possibility.
I would also like to give credit to a fellow blogger who I graduated from high school with, Hubris/Cal. He is a musician and is weekly posting a cover of a song he has recorded - this inspired me to share my art via a blog as well.
Goal of the blog: I want to post pages from my sketchbook whenever I finish 2 pages. This will be fairly regular (I never know when I'm going to finish 2 pages), but I'm hoping that I can keep up with how often that occurs. (I have a tendency of procrastinating and I'm hoping that this will help me become more active in my art-life.)

Why "Irving Stone Press"?: On the way home from Martha's after we finished my first 2 hardbound sketchbooks, she told me that when an artist creates their first books, they come up with a "press-name" (like a graffiti artist so that people may recognize their work). I wanted to find a press-name that sounded cool, but I wanted it to be purely accidental. I had a little gluing left to do on my one book (hadn't put in the end-sheets yet), so I grabbed 2 large books from my house, glued the end-sheets, placed my sketchbook between the two I had found and sat on the stack (so that I didn't need to find a huge stack of heavy books to keep the cover from bending). Once that was done, I went to put back the books; one was a broken Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the other was The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone. [A little more background on me: I am a sophomore at Penn State, University Park and going to end my years here as an art major. I like to work in all kinds of media, which has made finding a single medium to focus on hard for me, but recently I became interested in becoming a BFA (Bachelors in Fine Arts) major in Printmaking. I enjoy the process I have to go through in order to print and that I can also print as many of my prints as many times as I wish, which is another reason why I enjoyed making my own sketchbooks (lots of process). Right now I am taking a course in lithography and enjoying it very much.] "Irving Stone" reminded me of my developing passion for printmaking (lithography especially because there is a stone involved in printing), and I felt that the name was appropriate to be my press-name. I know nothing about the author and have never read his books - just liked the name. :) I am working on a simple logo idea that I can eventually stamp to the back of all of my books - I will let you know when that happens.

So, that's my intro and later today I will post pictures of my 2 sketchbooks with an emphasis on the spineless one. I will also be teaching you some terms of bookbinding as I show you more.

- Shlee