Paper Moths

I had been thinking, a while back, about combining letterpress printing and die-cutting to create some paper moth specimens. Something like the ones I made from leftover proofs of my book moths intaglio prints (sorry, no photos of those to hand at the moment), but more three-dimensional. I'm still planning to do that, but it occurred to me the other day that I could also make three dimensional moth specimens out of my handmade paper.

So I tried it. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram (@anagramforink on both), or are a friend on my personal Facebook account, you may have seen a photo of the first attempt. For the past couple of days, I've been making a cheap dollar store shadow box look nice to put it in, staining, adding a hanging wire, and lining it. I still have to find a small brass latch, but today I've been trying to decide what colour paper to line the box with.

I've narrowed it down to five more-or-less neutral papers. Royal blue looked nice, as did burgundy, but the rich colours, I thought, drew too much attention to themselves. Here are the five finalists (apologies for the less than stellar photos -- I took these with my iPad in poor lighting). Any opinions are welcome.

White:

Black:

Grey faux parchment:

Deep grey:

Deep brown:

Some of the papers aren't lying flat, but they will once they're pasted in, so please ignore that. I won't mention which one(s) I'm most inclined towards yet, as if like to see what people think.

And I will be making more of these, and they will be for sale. This is, I hope, just the beginning. Which means I'm going to need to make more paper...

Pay-What-You-Want Artist's Books and Books With Content

For info on this how and how it works, please see this post.

I debated whether or not to even include artist's books in the sale, but I need to raise funds quickly, so I'm putting just about everything on sale. So now's your chance to get some things cheap I would normally not put on sale (and may never put on sale again).

Aeryn Daring Lives Up to Her Name

hand-bound book with hand-pulled lithograph pages and cover paper
there are three different versions of the cover (taken from three different sections of the same image), but the insides are all the same
made in an edition of 9, signed, numbered, and dated on the colophon page
4 left (numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9)
original retail was $120

Leaf Book

hand-bound book, accordion-fold, printed with 3-colour lino and rubber-stamped text

made in an edition of 9, signed, and numbered, on the colophon page, date inside the front cover
4 left (numbers 3, 6, 8, and 9 -- 9 has a slipped rubber-stamp impression inside the front cover)
original retail was $40

Halifax Through the Stereoscope

6 stereoscopic images in an illustrated folder, hand-pulled lithographs printed from 4 aluminum photoplates colour-separated from colour photo negatives shot by me on a vintage Sputnik medium-format camera
edition of 10, signed, numbered, and dated on the back of the folder
includes a fold-out stereoviewer
4 left (1, 3, 6, and 9 -- 1 is a bit worn from handling and is missing the stereo viewer)
original retail was $75

Waterlily

hand-bound origami book made by attaching origami lilies as sections of the book
letterpress-printed traditional Japanese haiku about water, printed on Japanese two-tone paper from hand-set metal type
edition of 9, signed, numbered, and dated on the colophon page
6 left (numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9)
original retail was $50

Fey Mini-Comic

hand-bound pamphlet-style mini-comic book with letterpress-printed cover and laser-printed pages
edition of 25, numbered and signed on the back (the green one in the photo)
3 left (numbers 7, 19, and 24)
original retail $2

Fey Full-Size Comic

not really an artist's book, but I thought I'd throw it in here anyway
digitally-printed comic with full-colour covers and greyscale interior
available online, but I have 3 copies on hand I'd be happy to sign and doodle on
retails for $3

The Coming of the Fairies

also not an artist's book, but what the hell
this is my first novel, for middle-grade readers, and it's about fairies
I have 4 copies on hand I can sign and doodle on
retails for $9.99, also available on Amazon, and as an e-book ($2.99) from the usual outlets

Vixen by Nic Silver

one more not-artist's book
this one is my urban fantasy for grown ups (warning: contains sex and violence), written under one of my pen names
I have 4 copies on hand I can sign and doodle on
retails for (I think) $12.99, also available on Amazon, and as an e-book from all the usual outlets (currently free or 99 cents for a limited time)

Comic next: blank journals, including some one-of-a-kind

Corvus corax Sketch

Yesterday's entry in my new, giant natural history journal was the usual weather report and list of beasties in the yard. We had a new visitor, though: a raven.

Although we have a lot of ravens in the area, the closest they usually get to the yard is flying high overhead. For a few weeks in the fall they would gather in the evening in the woods just beyond out property line -- I could hear them gossiping and saw them fly over, but that was it.

But yesterday one stopped by to check out the seeds I put out and stayed long enough to pick some of them out of the snow with her enormous beak. She didn't stay long, though, because our resident crows, which are much, much more skittish than city crows, saw me watching from the window and flew off in a flurry of wings. That made the raven nervous enough to fly away, though she hadn't seemed concerned herself that I was watching.

This sketch isn't from life. I ran to get my camera, but when I came back was when the crows decided to cause a fuss, so I didn't manage a photo. Instead, I found a picture online that matched more or less the raven I saw. It's a pretty rough, quick sketch, but I think I succeeded in capturing, at least a little bit, the range of textures in the bird's feathers.

And, as promised, here's what the book looked like in its original  installation. Not very good photographs, I'm afraid, but I hope you get the idea.

Looking Back, Peering Ahead

One of last year's beginning-of-the-year goals was to blog more regularly. I did okay with that, up until mid-year, when everything fell apart. In fact, that's about when my fiction-writing goals evaporated, too. I'm not even sure why. Possibly I was just trying to do too much at once, as usual, and got overwhelmed.

But even though I didn't really meet many of my 2012 goals, I can't really call the year a failure, either. Here are some of the things I accomplished in 2012:

• I wrote three novels, a short story, and a novella. I was aiming for four novels and ten or twelve short pieces, so I didn't meet the goal. But still, three novels! Two of them still need editing and transcribing, but the bulk is done.
• I printed some new letterpress and linocut pieces, finished up a few bookbinding projects, and came up with a new notebook product (at the last minute for the holiday craft fair!) that I'm really pleased with. Again, I didn't meet my goal of finishing up all in-progress projects before starting new ones, but I did get a few things off my worktable.
• I spent more time walking in the woods. Though I didn't get in as much exercise-oriented walking as I wanted to, I renewed my love of simply wandering and seeing what there is to see. As a consequence, I felt renewed and refreshed creatively, even though my writing production crashed halfway through the year.
• I changed jobs. Sort of. Though I really loved my job writing about videogames for About.com, I've been wanting to get back into something more writing or fiction or book oriented for a few years. I've applied for a few other About sites, and even made it to the evaluation stage once (the process of getting hired at About is fairly long and involves writing a lot of samples, but it's worth it). Finally, this fall, I made the switch to writing about books, and I'm now the "Guide" to Young Adult Books. I'm still editing the videogames super-newsletter, though, so I get to keep up on that stuff, too.

Those are the biggest accomplishments, I think. So on to my goals for 2013.

• I'm going to attempt, again, to blog more regularly. I've just installed Blogger for iOS on my iPad, which I hope will help with that, since I've been doing more and more work on my tablet since I got it. My two pen-name author blogs will probably only get infrequent updates still, but this blog, and my bone blog should start seeing some more posts.
• Again, I'm going to aim to finish more in-progress projects. I have plans to do a lot more linocut prints this year -- there's the Vanishing Bestiary to work on, and a triptych of fossil-inspired prints, and I just had a request to make my winter raven card design into a larger art print. I have some bookbinding things to finish up, too. First off, though, is to get those dragon pop-ups done and sent off to my IndieGoGo backers.
• I'm going to focus on getting my fiction writing and publishing activities back on track. This means transcribing and editing Familiar (book 3 in the Others series by alter-ego Nic Silver), and adding needed scenes and editing Dark Stranger (sequel to Milk Sister). Also, I'm going to get the full Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective novel formatted and available as an ebook and POD paperback (by alter ego Calliope Strange). As far as writing, I'll be finishing Reindeer Girl, and tackling the next Nic Silver novel. After that, I'm not sure, but I have a list of ideas to choose from.

Of course, I can't start a new year without a few brand new projects. This year, I have two big ones in mind.

• First, a non-fiction project. I won't say too much yet, because I'm still mulling it over, and it's the sort of thing I have a specific publisher in mind for, and if they don't want it, I probably won't make it a priority. It'll tie together my folklore background and my current writing-about-YA-books in a scholarly sort of book. This month, I'll be working on a proposal and sample chapter.
• Second, an artistic and natural history project. This is one I've been thinking about for a while, but always put off because it seemed most logical to begin it at the beginning of the year. So starting a little later today, I'm going to use a great big notebook I made for an unrelated art project and start keeping a natural history journal. So as not to be overwhelmed, I'm not going to try to force myself to write every day, though it would be cool if I managed it. I'll just write down observations and make little sketches of the world outside my door as the year goes by.

And now I think I've probably blathered on enough for one day.

Recent Letterpress Work (Or, I Am Not Dead)

So much for my goal of posting something every week. I don't even really have the excuse of being busy. Which isn't to say I haven't been busy. I have. Just not so busy I couldn't post something. But anyway.

I am writing lots of fiction, and planning some other fun things. I've been making a few things, like this entirely non-letterpress item:

Available from one of my Etsy shops, if you're interested.

As for letterpress things, I finally got the "Spring" card in the four seasons series done, leaving just the "Autumn" one, which I hope to get done soon. The bulk of these are still in the Dawson Printshop, waiting for me to trim them down to size, but they are printed, at least.

I also played around with some wood type (and a linocut) while I was teaching (not during class time, of course, but while waiting for my students to arrive). I started with this little card:

Then did this one:

And then this:

You can probably tell I printed the first colour on the next card right after printing the second colour on the previous card, to reduce the number of times I had to clean the press. I do love printing these simple cards with vintage type and translucent colours, and I have plenty of ideas for more. I'm thinking "Thank You" and "Happy Birthday" cards should be next, since those are things people often ask about.

Right now I'm working on a book cover for my novel Reindeer Girl, which will be serialized by JukePop Serials starting in September, but I'll do a whole post on that once the picture is done.

Pondering The Vanishing Bestiary

I love bestiaries, and I've been wanting to make one for ages. So slowly this idea has been taking shape in my brain, for a bestiary of vanished species. It will be letterpress printed, with minimal text (but what text there is hand-set in metal type), and illustrated either from polymer plates or linocuts. I'll probably go with lino, but I'll have to do a test illustration to make sure it'll work.

As I said, the pictures will be of vanished species--I'm thinking beasts that went extinct directly, or at least largely, due to human interference. And the images will be skeletons, because I like bones. I may do just the skeleton, or I may include the body of the animal (perhaps just as an outline). That's one of the things that hasn't quite formed in my head yet, but which test illustrations will help with. (Apologies for the mangled sentence structure there.)

So my next step is to decide on a possible list of species to include--dodo, thylacine, quagga . . . if anyone has suggestions, feel free to post them. And I need to decide on a size, so I can start on a test image. After that, I have to figure out paper, typeface, binding style . . .

Way back at the beginning of the year (which looks so far past on the calendar, which feels like such a brief time), I said I wasn't going to start any major new projects until I'd crossed a bunch of half-done things off my list. And while I haven't really finished as many things as I'd like, this isn't really a new project. It's been percolating in my brain for over a year now.

I also had thought of doing a similar project that would be a suite of intaglio prints rather than a book. And it would be just skulls, each one life-size on the copper plate. That's something I may revisit at some point, when I actually have some way to make and print intaglio again.

Anyway, no pictures yet, alas. But I may start on that sample image this weekend.

A Couple More Frogs

This will probably be the last frog-related post for a while (though I can't promise anything), but I wanted to post pictures of the finished card and print, as well as an in-progress shot of the cut on my little proof press.

Spring Peepers Card

Here's the finished card, printed in green ink on handmade recycled cotton rag printmaking paper. I plan to do some on cattail paper later on, assuming I can salvage the half-made pulp that's fermenting on my picnic table.

I like the green, but the next ones will probably be brown or black. And spring peepers aren't really green, anyway.

Spring Peepers Print

I also did these little frogs as a print, on the same paper, in the same ink. Because the cuts are actually two separate pieces, I could move them around.

As you can see, though, I really liked the configuration I put them in on the card, because even though I wasn't looking at that when I set up the print, they ended up in almost the same places, just farther apart. Ah, well.

In-Progress

Here are the plates on my little table-top proof press, inked up and ready for the paper.

My press is type-high, so to print unmounted lino, I have a piece of 3/4 inch plywood on the bed, then newsprint and mylar to keep things clean (unmounted cuts tend to pick up ink on the back, and mylar is easy to wipe clean). Then the lino goes down, then the paper. On top of that I put another sheet of newsprint, then a press blanket cut from an old wool blanket (like an army blanket, but it's pinkish instead of grey), then two sheets of eska board (bookbinder's board). That gives a nice deep impression on the handmade paper, and if I need to, I can adjust it by changing the amount of board and paper.

Spring Brings Out the Peepers

Here's something I'm working on:

Two little wee linocuts that I'll print on handmade paper tomorrow. I originally planned to print them on cattail paper, but I'm pretty sure I won't have time to make any more paper by the weekend, so I'll print them on some odds and ends of recycled and the last of the last batch of goldenrod paper. I'm thinking of printing them in bright green ink, even though Spring Peepers are usually more brown. Green just seems more springy.

And I finished printing the goldenrod lino today, so tomorrow I'll fold and package the cards. It's on goldenrod paper, of course.

And here's a terrible photo of one of the latest batch of blank books. I'll take better photos of whichever ones are left after the craft fair and get them up on Etsy. I made ten in various colours and configurations, and have one left from the last batch.

Coelacanth: Living Fossil Birthday Card

So here's another one of my recent lino pieces finished.

The actual linocut is one I made several years ago to go with some hand-set type, and I've been wanting to use it again for a card. Here's the inside (also hand-set metal type):

If you're unfamiliar with the reference, the coelacanth is a big, ugly fish that was thought to have been extinct for thousands of years until one turned up in a fisherman's catch in the late 1930s. Since then, it's often been used as an example of a "living fossil."

I am wondering if I should take along some blank inserts with me to the craft fair next week, in case anyone likes the card but not the insides.

Anyway, I only printed a small number for now, because I didn't have many sheets of this particular paper, which was a batch I made to use up some pulp. It's half recycled rag, half goldenrod, but the rag had been frozen and didn't spread out well in the vat, which created the blobby look. And because the goldenrod was the end of the batch, there were a lot of stem bits it it, making the paper brittle and crunchy. I also had problems with the paper sticking to the plate and leaving bits behind, so I had to wipe off the lino and re-ink after every print.

I'll see how these sell before I print more, at which point I'll use a different paper.

New Design and More In-Progress

Phew. I still haven't got back in the groove of blogging. I blame it on finally having something resembling full-time work (with its firm deadlines and all that). But anyway, here are the few little things I've been working one.

Scarab Card

Thing the first (actually, it's thing the second, but it's the first one done, so it gets bumped up): a scarab greeting card.

It's a hand-cut and hand-printed linocut (see my previous post for pictures of the actual plate, if you're interested), printed on handmade (by me) paper. The paper is approximately 50% recycled cotton rag printmaking paper and 50% Nova Scotia goldenrod harvested from my back field. It has a sheet of classic laid paper tipped-in to the inside to make for easier writing, and it comes with a nice deep red envelope.

I had originally planned a multi-colour print for this one, but I started with the black so I'd be able to see how to register the other colours, and I liked how it printed (see that lovely deep embossment? No? Click on the image for a close-up) so much I decided to just go with the black.

Scarab Print

Then I decided to pull a few as prints, which I may do multi-colour, but I think I'll try hand-colouring instead of a multi-block print. I'll try one and see if I like it. But here it is with just black, printed on the same paper as the card version.

The fun thing about these is that the imperfections in the handmade paper actually enhance the print (at least I think so), so I can save all the less-than perfect sheets for prints. Incidentally, the image is my own original design, based on ancient Egyptian and not-so-ancient Art Nouveau images, as well as on actual photos of real scarab beetles.

More Linocut Cards

I don't have individual pictures of the other two cards I'm working on, and won't until they're done, but there they are in the half-finished state.

The fish is a coelacanth, a "living fossil," and it will get a tipped-in insert with "HAPPY BIRTHDAY to a living fossil" printed from hand-set type. The plant is goldenrod, and will have a second colour added. All of these are actually on 50% rag 50% goldenrod paper, but the different batches produced very different results.

The first batch, with the goldenrod flower printed on it, is paler and was made from fresh pulp. The second batch, with the scarab, was made from goldenrod plants that had sat and gone swampy for several weeks because I got busy and had no room in the freezer (it was the actual boiled plants that sat--I rinsed and pulped them after). The paper is much darker. The third batch, with the fish, is the same goldenrod pulp as the second, but the rag pulp came out of the freezer and didn't disperse into the vat very well. I liked the way it looked, though, so I left it.

And that's what I've been up to.

Linocuts in Progress

Yeah, I got a bit swamped with dayjob stuff and with trying to keep up my fiction writing, too, so I haven't posted here in ages. But I have been working on a few things.

I've been teaching letterpress for Extended Studies at NSCAD for the past six weeks or so and the final class is tomorrow. I teach the class again starting in early May. I've been trying to sneak in a little printing time of my own before each class--last week I printed some invitations for a client, but I also got a chance to proof a dragon linocut I made off and on over the last . . . well, too long to tally up, but a long time. Then I managed to leave all the proofs in the shop, so I don't have any pictures to show you. But I will after I bring them home tomorrow.

In the meantime, my worktable has this on it:

Wee little linocuts that I will print on my own handmade paper to make cards. The top one is goldenrod, and it will also have a yellow block, and maybe a green one, depending on how ambitious I feel. It'll be printed on 50% recycled cotton rag / 50% goldenrod paper. Here's a closeup:

And the bottom one is of course a scarab. It's an original design based on a variety of ancient Egyptian sources. I've had a big fascination with beetles for a while, but especially so now that I've got a character growing in my head who has a peculiar affinity for beetles.

I'm especially fascinated by the combination of scarabs and falcons, not just with the wings, but with the big falcon feet, too. Here's a peek into my process, with the original sketch, the tracing paper I used to transfer it to the lino and then used to play with colours, and the lino for the black layer.

I'm planning (if I have time) to do this in two versions: a two- or three-colour one on a greeting card, and then a six-colour limited edition print (black, green, blue, yellow, red, and metallic gold).

And, if you're curious about the beetle character, she's in this short story by my alter ego Nic Silver, available for Amazon Kindle:

November Giveaway: Do You Love Books?

Eep! I didn't realize how late I was getting this posted. But here is the prize for this month's giveaway:

It's 9 by 19 inches, letterpress printed from wood type and a linocut in two colours. By me. And if it hasn't sold, I'll throw in the last copy of this card (which I will eventually reprint, should you wish to buy one):

It can't remember the size off the top of my head, but it's about 4 by 6 inches or somewhere in that vicinity. Also letterpress printed, from hand-set metal type and an old printer's cut. (Little trivia aside: the quote is actually, "So many books, so little time." I couldn't find a period in the typecase, so I had to change it to use a comma instead.)

And finally, the winner gets a digital copy of either The Coming of the Fairies or Milk Sister, both of which have books as important items in their stories (and so does the novel I'm working on now, come to think of it).

Leave a comment to enter, and make sure I'll be able to contact you.

Experiments in Papermaking: Goldenrod

So after several years of not making much paper, a request from a client got me working on it again. I ended up making a big batch of recycled paper from 100% cotton rag printmaking paper--mostly proofs and misprints, with a stack of book pages I had done and then decided not to use to round it off. The result was a lovely, soft, speckled-grey paper then took letterpress printing beautifully. I know I've already showed this photo, but here's the result of the job I did for the client.

But I decided that if I'm going to start papermaking again, I want to do some real papermaking, starting with raw plant materials and ending with paper. So I looked around my property and decided we had plenty of goldenrod and tall grasses in the back field. Goldenrod is also a dye-plant, and Nova Scotia has 19 native species. I think I had two different species in what I harvested. I've showed this photo before, too, but here's what I had after an hour or two of cutting plants.

The next step, once the plants are thoroughly dry, is to cut them into pieces, about an inch long or so. When I was done, this blue plastic bin was just about full (for size comparison, it's about half the size of the big bins in the previous photograph). You may notice that even dry, goldenrod stays green.

Then comes boiling. Lots of boiling. I boiled even longer than my book recommended, as the plants just didn't seem to be breaking down at all. Then I rinsed--lots of lovely golden brown water that I'd do something with if I knew anything about dyeing (an experiment for a later date maybe: hand-dyed bookcloth). Then a shorter boil. Then I drained the plants until I'd have time to blend them.

Still quite green, you'll see. And for those curious about the results of my canning-pot quest, I found this one at Value Village. It's even bigger than the one my mom always used (and still uses) for preserves.

Then comes blending. I didn't take a picture of either that or the resulting pulp. But it stayed very green. Dark, lovely, grey-green. Something to do for next time, perhaps, is to file the blades of my blender so they beat rather than cut the pulp.

I tested out the pulp when I did the demo for the awards gala. I mixed it half and half with my recycled rag paper pulp, because I hadn't had time to blend all of what I had boiled, and I wasn't sure how quickly I'd go through it.

Even mixed with the other pulp, the goldenrod still looked very dark when formed into a sheet, so I was glad I hadn't used it for the menus. However, by the time it dried, it became much lighter, and much less green. it's hard to tell from the photo, but the final paper is a greenish grey with straw coloured inclusions (mostly stem pieces) and darker speckles (the larger, greyer ones are from the recycled pulp and the smaller, darker ones are goldenrod).

I still have half a bin of dried goldenrod, plus a pot full of boiled waiting to be pulped, so next I'll try pure goldenrod pulp. At some point, too, I'm going to try boiling with a little bit of lye, to see if it breaks down better and eliminates more of the stem chunks. I'll be making a new postbound book to keep track of my experiments, with a sheet of the resulting paper and a plain sheet with notes on what I did. It'll probably be nicer than this sample book I made sometime in the late 90s.

The next thing I'm going to do, is make a two-colour linocut of goldenrod to print on this paper to make greeting cards. I just have to decide if I'll print directly on the paper, or print on a separate sheet and tip the illustration on. More experiments, I guess.