New Artist's Book

[Artyczar]

I just fixed the last of those drawings. They're done now and out of my hair. I enjoyed them, until I had to redo one of them. Well, that's not true. I still enjoyed it, but I didn't like beating myself up about making the mistake in the first place. But these things are bound to happen and I should just accept it, damn it.

I don't know if I showed the flypages yet, or the colophon. This is a pretty Japanese paper, printed gold, and I'm drawing little flowers on the backsides.

 

[snoball]

Ayin, it is actually exciting to watch this come together. You are doing a great job.

 

[Artyczar]

Thank you so much sno!

 

[joe1It]

sorry it didn't work, for extra work, but the result of what you are doing is wonderful, Snoball is right, draws, color page and writing, fonts are nice, reading is very nice and fresh.

 

[Artyczar]

Thank you Joe.

 

[Artyczar]

I sketched the two watercolors I'll be working on, one of them I sketched 5 times for each book. The other I sketched once and have four more to go. They are very light because they're going to be painted and the pencil marks will probably be erased, or just covered in the paint (hopefully). Don't really want them to show.

 

[joe1It]

both beautiful, beautiful starting point for watercolors

 

[Enyaw]

One of them I sketched 5 times for each book

That's a lot of sketching

I know, 1 for each book. Looking good.

 

[Artyczar]

Yup! But it's not that hard, as I have a skeleton template to start with, then I add some details. It's the painting part that will take forever. I mean, it's all time consuming I guess. And I'm not the fastest at these things.

 

[Enyaw]

tricky, yet effective.
My boss used to think I was very organized and efficient but in actual fact I was lazy and didn't want to do things twice.

 

[Artyczar]

Believe it or not, I'm just as lazy.

 

[Artyczar]

Just finishing up the last of the covers now. I'm embroidering the last one. Here's a shot of when I finished the first one. My fingers tips are aching!

I may do the linoprints this weekend. I'm really starting to get this thing done!

 

[Enyaw]

 

[PSA3475]

The progress you are making is amazing...I’m loving it

 

[Artyczar]

I have no images yet, but today, since 5am, I've been working on the templates for the front and back of the fold-out map--probably the biggest job of the whole book. It's not easy for a number of reasons. My plans for it keep changing, like I can't paint it because the paper is too light/thin. And since I'm doing the front and the back, one side might show through the other side, so probably no paint, especially anything dark or opaque.

There is the map side and the other side that looks like promo, which I wanted to color block. I don't think I can do it unless I do the whole thing in colored pencil. The map side is all light-colored, mostly white, with a lot of colored, outlined roads, and wavy background topography lines, and I must do the skeleton on a lightbox. Doing both sides on the lightbox is pretty difficult. Deciphering the back images over the roads isn't easy.

If I did it all on thicker, paintable paper, then it wouldn't fold properly in the book.

So, colored pencil might have to be the answer. I guess that's okay. The only thing about that that bugs me (other than part of it being more time consuming), is that I already printed the colophon, which states that the fold-out map is "hand-painted." No mention of colored pencils. So, I'm wondering if I need to reprint?

 

[Artyczar]

I decided I have to reprint the pages with the colophon on it, otherwise it's going to bother me forevermore. Plus, it will be "false advertising" as well. Ha ha.

EDIT: Here is how the new colophon will read:

 

[Iain]

Colour pencil would look great for the map. It is refreshing to read an unvarnished account. I mess up almost everything. It's my one constancy. You can rely on us for that. "If the fool were to persist in his folly..." Chin up and head down!

 

[Artyczar]

I've been working on the first one from the template and well, I don't like it! I'm liking the template much better (the one below). The colored topography lines are too dark and thick and I think I hate it. It might be scrap!

It lost all the words and footpaths. I don't know if I should keep working on this one or move to another one some other time. I shouldn't have used very much colored pencil at all--maybe just the lakes and the top title and that's it, and save most of it for the back.

...more wasted time.

 

[Enyaw]

.. before we hit the repeat button but need to take careful aim. We don't know how many live rounds we have.
If we have questions it usually means we need a break from the circle and we need to look for a distraction to allow our brain to get out of the loop.

 

[Desforges]

What a trip! Thanks for taking us along.
You are very inspiring.