Printed Story: workshop

FBAC on-line class The Printed Story taught by Catherine Cross Tsintzos.

In this class we each developed a story, determined a layout and design for a book, created graphics and text for the story, and completed one small accordion or pamphlet book.

Week one we worked on a theme for our story.  We discussed art books and storytelling using images and words.  To help develop the overall layout and design of our book we used storyboards.  The Storyboard was 6-8 squares: two squares for the beginning, 2-4 squares for the middle, and 2 squares for the conclusion.  Each frame included a sketch, text and notes on boarders, colors etc. 

I decided to tell the story of how we created a wildflower garden for my Mother-in-law.   

• It starts with the field and plowing.  
• The middle is about the plants growing.  
• The end is about the butterflies that visit the wildflowers.

Week two we worked on relief printmaking techniques.  Because I had them already, I used Speedball water soluble inks, baren, hard brayer and linoleum cutting set.  We used thin linoleum that can easily be cut into smaller shapes.  

I used photos of the garden, flowers and insects as references for the lino stamps I carved.

Field sketch and cut lineo block

Photo and cut lineo blocks

I did several test prints to learn how to mix the 3 colors of ink to get the color I wanted (light green, oranges, browns, black).  

test printing smal lieno blocks

 

I did test prints to determine if printing the smaller blocks over the full page green field would work (i.e. would the colors show up; would the design work).

test printing flower blocks over printed green field

Week three we worked on printing and assembling the final book.

I created a cover for the pamphlet book, printed one side of the pages and let that dry for a few days, then carefully printed on the other side.  I painted backgrounds on the flowers and butterflies pages.  I added tissue paper between the pages to protect the ink.  

Cover

first and second pages with tissue paper between

Making wildflower seeded paper

I attended an online class hosted by Frederick Book Arts Center "Gardener's Blizzard Book".  The book artist Catherine Cross Tsintzos presented information on book binding and paper making techniques to create a Gardener's Blizzard Book with handmade and hand dyed paper.

The Blizzard book is a complicated folding of a long strip of paper to create a series of pockets that can act as a book spine to hold additional pages.  This book design was developed by Hedi Kyle.  I found a wonderful blog that discusses the book form and as well as a video that shows how to do do the folds very clearly.  I am not going to be using the Blizzard book I made to hold my seed pages (I have a different use for them).  However, this is a very cool book design and I will be using it in other projects.  

This is my first attempt at making paper.  I used a food processor to convert torn paper into wet pulp.  I transferred the pulp to a water filled VAT (really just a big shallow pan).  I sprinkled dried wildflower seeds I had collected last fall on top of the water.

I carefully lowered my small deckle box into the vat, and slowly raised it to the surface while gently shaking it to distribute the pulp and seeds evenly. 

After pressing most of the water out of the pulp, I opened the deckle box and transferred the wet pulpy seed paper to a glass sheet to dry.  When the paper was dry I carefully pealed it off of the glass pane.  

Take aways from my first try at paper making:

• Add more pulp to the VAT - or the paper will be very thin
• The glass has to be VERY clean - or the paper will stick 
• It would be nice to have some color - dye or dried flower petals
• It is not as messy as it looks and it is lots of fun

Final note.  I used up the left over pulp and seeds in the vat by making a few small seed bombs.