30 June 2010

Three Pretty Peacocks

I managed to stay up into the wee hours of the morning again last night, which is becoming a habit I'm going to have to break soon, as I'll be teaching in Halifax and will need to get up in the wee hours of the morning, instead. As soon as teaching is over mid-August, I'll no doubt return to my nocturnal ways, though.


But I've digressed already and I only just started. Right, peacocks. One of the things I did while staying up late was finish the peacock ATCs. The one above is (rather obviously) "Blue Peacock," and the one below is (also rather obviously) "White Peacock."


And finally, here is "Green Peacock." I have a tendency to put all my energy and attention into the central figures, and then end up at a loss about what to do for the background. Of course, when your size is 2.5 by 3.5 inches, a quick wash of a few colours is probably perfectly acceptable. I'm planning to move to some larger sizes, soon, and then I'm gonna have to give more thought to backgrounds.


I also finished three Creatures of Myth and Fantasy cards, and the Asian dragon for the pen/ink and watercolour swap. I'll post some pics of those tomorrow. Next I need to draw some lights, more pen/ink + watercolour, and some historical heroines (no avoiding drawing people for that one!).

Satyr, Repurposed

I had a datebook page to finish up for a collaborative project (no pay, just exposure and website traffic). The dimensions were a tall 8 inches by 3 inches wide, so not much room for borders or anything. So I decided to go with the date info at the top and an image and my info at the bottom.

Yes, that's the same satyr as the ATC-in-progress image I posted yesterday. I just sent it off today, so I haven't heard back if it's appropriately sized and formatted, though I followed the instructions, so it should be.

Of course, I now can't find the URL for the project, but when I locate it, I'll update the post. I suspect they may still need pages, but the original deadline was July 1, so they'd have to be done fast.

Edit: replaced spelling-mistake image with corrected version.

29 June 2010

Peacocks and Satyrs

Here are some quick in-progress shots of my latest ATC illustrations. First, some peacocks:


I had a fourth one, but I didn't like how the sketch turned out, and it was an extra anyway, so I decided to leave it out. Besides, as usual I've left them to the last minute and need to mail them by the end of the week, so I don't have time to do a better one. I'll probably include one of Leonardo's Clockwork Scarabs as a swap host gift, instead.

And, then, some creatures of myth and fantasy:


The dragon is the odd card out, being Asian instead of Greek like the rest, so I'll probably put him aside for another upcoming swap (theme: pen and ink with watercolour), which will actually put me ahead a little.

The yellowish shiny stuff on the hippocampus is masking fluid (aka liquid frisket), which is basically latex suspended in water. I'm going to see what it looks like with the rest of the card painted and the mane left seafoam-white. Also, with this set, I discovered two things: one, I need more horse reference images and two, I really like drawing satyrs (even though this guy's head turned out a little too big). I knew I liked drawing satyrs--it's one reason there are satyr characters in Fey--but I had sort of forgotten. There may be a lot more satyrs in my illustrative future. Steampunk satyrs, anyone?

23 June 2010

Books Without Moths

I was going to continue with more pictures and blathering about my book moth print, but I think I'll save that for when I have some other things done with them that I have planned . . .

Instead, here are some little books I've made lately. As you may or may not know, I write for Handmade News and I've been doing a sort of Bookbinding 101, working through structures from simple to more complex. The last several tutorials have been on variations of the pamphlet binding, which is a surprisingly versatile structure.

This first photo is, of course, just a plain little pamphlet with a cardstock cover. That's where I started the series, so people could first learn the pamphlet stitch. Learn that, and you can make your own chapbooks.

These next two are variations with fold-over covers. The green one underneath folds right around to hide the stitching and close the book, while the cream one only folds around to close, leaving the stitching exposed. I decided to sew it with ribbon instead of thread, for decorative effect, and essentially sewed it inside-out so the knot ended up on the outside, again for decoration. The green one is actually one I made in intro bookbinding class years ago with Susan Mills. The cream one I made based on the green one, but simplifying the cover to use less paper. Personally, I prefer the green one. I've done other versions of this little book, including these:















Then, after the softcover variations, I moved on to hardcover. Basically, a hardcover pamphlet is a pamphlet-stitched bunch of pages in a case. It's simple to make, and will be a good way to move into sewn bindings.


In these, I had a little fun. I actually only included a plain cloth or paper cover in the tutorial, but I wanted to illustrate how easy it is to dress it up. I had a bunch of scrapbooking stickers lying around, so I used them on the covers of the cream and brown book and the little black one. I also used scrapbooking paper with writing and travel themes for the endpapers. The one with the fish is one I made in Susan Mills' class, where everyone in the class made a set of pages, and we exchanged them and each bound our own book. My pages had a coelacanth print in blue acrylic paint. I had a set of pages left over, so I cut out the fish and glued him on the cover. All of these books are for sale, incidentally, except the fish (and the green one in the second photo), so if you see something you want, let me know.

Finally, the tutorial I wrote today (which will be posted on Friday) has a variation of endpapers, and I showed them how to make a cover with cloth spine and corners and paper covers. I went with a monochrome colour scheme, which I really like (and I get to use coloured paper for the pages, which I love to do).


The brightness of the purple cloth and the darkness of the paper are exaggerated a bit due to shooting outside on a rainy day (that really does weird things to the intensity of colours), but it's not exaggerated as much as you might think. Anyway, I'm really pleased with this little book, and the ones in the last photo, so I think I may make more of them for my Etsy shop. They go together pretty quickly, but the rich materials make them look most delicious. I'd want to buy one, if I weren't the one making them.

20 June 2010

Book Moths and Other Prints

I've been making an effort, the last couple of weeks, to list or re-list something on each of my two Etsy and one ArtFire shops. Hypothetically, it should make my shops more visible by always having something come up when someone searches on a relevant term, instead of having everything buried by a long-ago list date. I'm not sure it's a direct result, but I've had several things in Etsy treasuries recently, and made two sales in a span of a few days when I haven't previously sold anything in months. So that's encouraging.


But in the process, I have managed to neglect blogging entirely. So. One of my Etsy shops is focused more on my art (the other is more craft, with blank cards and blank books and book jewellery), and in there I've started adding more of my prints. I'm still not entirely happy with the display images. It's really difficult to show the tactility of a hand-pulled print in a photograph. I'm wondering, too, if scanning in sections and piecing together images in Photoshop might not result in better colours. But anyway. Listing more prints, so I thought I'd blog a bit about one print in particular that I really like but which I think is difficult to illustrate in an Etsy listing. That print is a little (7.5 by 10 inches) intaglio print with the very long title "Figure 1. Book Mimicry in Moths found in the Laputa Pansophic University Library" (on Etsy here).


Book Moths, as I call it for short (because who wants to type, or even pronounce, that title over and over) is part of what will eventually become the Frisland Archaeology Project (once I am no longer broke and can invest in another domain and the web hosting to go with it), an ongoing multi-media project that I may very literally be working on for the rest of my life. This is vague, I realize, but you'll just have to wait and see. I'm very excited, and I hope there will be more to tell soon. (Many of my other prints, stories and even comics are parts of this larger project, so feel free to amuse yourself trying to figure out how it'll work).

The print was made from a copper and polymer composite plate. In intaglio printmaking, photopolymer is used to create a resist for the acid etch. Because it starts out photosensitive, you can use it to transfer drawings from a transparency to a plate, then etch the plate. You then generally remove the polymer before printing. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

To make this image, I did a bunch of pen and ink drawings of various moths, then scanned them and made a Photoshop file with the moths arranged as they might be in a plate from an old book. I also scanned some pages of actual old books (I chose only ones printed in black on white). In Photoshop, I layered the old book pages with the moths to create moths with wings patterned by the pages. Then I added the "fig. 1" text.


The concept, as you've probably figured out, was to create something that looked like it had been taken out of an old natural history book. This is the plate illustrating how moths in the library of the LPU have evolved camouflage so they can hide within the pages of books. Each moth, however, is adapted to one specific page of one specific book.

Anyway. Once I had the image, I printed it on a trasparency (or, rather, I got a friend with a better inkjet printer at the time to print it for me). Then, in the printmaking studio, I adhered some photopolymer to a copper plate (a process done in low light and not, I am happy to say, in total darkness). Then I used the platemaker, which has a super-bright light in it, to expose the polymer and the transparency. Because of the way intaglio printing works (that is, the printing lines are sunk into the plate rather than raised), you use a positive of the image rather than a negative as you would in letterpress. You still have to have the text backwards, though, in order to have it print right-reading. Once the polymer is exposed, it's processed to remove any unexposed polymer (the parts blocked by the blacks in the transparency). Then it's left to sit in the sun to cure.


Once cured, the plate is etched as one would normally etch a copper plate. Usually, the polymer is removed after etching, but it doesn't have to be. In an image with a lot of fine detail, the very finest parts may not have penetrated right through the polymer, and would not then have etched. In that case, removing the polymer means losing detail. And anyway, polymer is pretty tough stuff, and can take a fair amount of abuse. It will eventually break down under the pressure of printing, but if you're only doing a small edition, it's not a problem (for the record, it holds up better than the burr on a drypoint line). I only planned an edition of around 10, and there was a lot of fine detail in the moths, so I left the polymer on.

When I was finished the print run, I had an edition of 10 plus a BAT (essentially it's the first "good" print, generally kept by the artist, and used as a model against which to print the rest; not everyone bothers with a BAT, and while I usually like to have one, many of my early intaglio and lino prints don't have them). I also had a number of not-so-perfect prints which I excluded from the edition. I kept them, because I had a plan for them, about which I will blog later.

The last couple of steps in Book Moths were to tea-stain "age" the edges and razor-cut the left edge. Astute readers will realize this was to make it look like the prints had once been actual plates in books that some vandal had cut out (no actual books were harmed in the making of this print).


I started this post intending to blog about the moths and show you the bits that I composed them from, but this has already gone on longer than I intended, so I'll stop here and come back to the moths themselves tomorrow, perhaps.

16 June 2010

Little Fictions: Drake

He promised me a dragon, so I followed him into his lair.

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.

10 June 2010

Little Fictions: Clockwork

The automaton liked to unwind at the end of a long day.

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.

07 June 2010

Little Fictions: Fairy Tale

"Once upon a time," he said. "Well, you know the rest."

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.

05 June 2010

Little Fictions: Chew

Big Bad's mother said, "Don't gulp your food, dear."

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.

04 June 2010

Little Fictions: Classified

FOR SALE: one coffin, hardly used.

[Yes, a variation on a story that's been done, and not by me. But mine has zombies. Maybe.]

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.

03 June 2010

Little Fictions: King of Kings, Ruler of Camels

The King sat his camel like he'd been born there, hardly noticing as it shifted and fidgeted. His lower body seemed to automatically adjust to the animal's movements so that his upper body, and especially his regal head, hardly moved at all.

The skinny boy had worn a dirty white tunic that left his bare calloused knees exposed. This child was lifted onto to back of a small camel, clinging to the hands that held him, rigid with terror but refusing to let out the wail building up in his chest. Five minutes later the boy was sprawled in the dust and the camel was placidly chewing its cud as if nothing had happened.

He was always afraid of camels.


"Blessings to all!" the King shouted as we passed between the bulging rows of citizens lining the streets. One of the ministers gasped, then quickly covered his mouth. The King was too important to waste his breath on commoners. As he turned to look back at the shocked royal party I saw the mischievous twinkle in his eye, the ill-concealed grin.

The boy was taller this time, and dressed in fine clothes, but still grubby. Holding grimly to his saddle, he tried out every peasant swear word he'd ever overheard on the camel. It only grunted in reply and still refused to do more than rock from side to side. Someone had gasped then, too, at the words the boy dredged up to shout at his mount. And the boy's eyes sparked and he grinned. Later he was whipped for the bad language, but he had never regretted it.

Our King was resplendent in deep purples and blues and greens; he seemed a bright temple painting next to the unfinished sketches of the citizens in desert hues. Even the royal party was but a pale wash of colour, a test of the brush, beside his brilliance. Our King sat shining atop his placid camel, bathed and scented with vanilla and cinnamon, waving solemnly to his subjects.

It seemed so little time ago, only the time it takes for a memory to surface, that he was just my snot-nosed little brother.

[This was originally titled "King of Kings, Master of Camels" and it won a character description contest at the now defunct fantasywriterswanted.com. The prize was a replica of the One Ring in a light-up case.]

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.

Little Fictions: Chicken Legs

After so many years in a mobile home, Baba Yaga was tired of broken crockery.

[Originally jotted in my writing notebook on November 2, 2002.]

Little Fictions are tiny stories. I originally posted them on another blog (also called Little Fictions), but decided I have too many separate projects/blogs on the go. These stories will eventually be hand letterpress printed on postcards, book marks and little posters.