The evolution of a new book

Photos show the stages of creating a new mini concertina book – 'Bristol Terrace'. I started by drawing the row of colourful terrace houses above the harbour, then made a gouache painting. I scanned this to create digital artwork, which was then printed (3 up on an SRA3 sheet) by printed.com. After chopping the pages down and folding the concertinas, I made covers in four different colourways and then bound the books. After trying a few different options, I finally decided upon plain grey endpapers… my preference is for patterned endpapers but everything I tried distracted from the houses. Also in the production line are some smart wooden bases for these books to stand on… to be unveiled at BABE (Bristol Artists' Book Event) at the Arnolfini on 1 and 2 April, and then available in my online shop soon after.

Tobacco art at the Tobacco Factory

Luke Carter - Lethal Trade

Olivia Jones - Demolition

Charlotte Biszewski

The ‘Set in Stone’ exhibition opened at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol yesterday evening - open until 27 September, so pop along for a nicotine- themed cornucopia of art. Great to see what everyone had produced - more highlights to be featured later this month - and many thanks to Charlotte Biszewski for organising the project and expertly curating the exhibition. 

Pull the other one

Prototype cracker book… part of a collaborative project with the Artists’ Book Club (ABC) at the University of the West of England - inspired by Rebecca Weeks’ magnificent collection of cracker toys.

The cover is grey board with painted edges, and covered in orange flock paper (30p a metre from the wonderful Scrappies in Church Stretton). Decorated with red rubber stamped stripes, neon acrylic paint dots and neon pink paper. Inner pages are digitally printed scans of back-drawn monoprints on 300gsm gesso paper (from printed.com). These are then hand printed with rubber stamps using Tsukineko Radiant Neon ink pads. This will eventually be a small edition, presented with a collection of other cracker books. Don’t seem to be shaking off the obsession with neon colour any time soon.

One white beast

Working on a companion book to ‘Ten White Birds’… ‘Ten White Beasts’. 

Forest

Trial and error with stencils and stamps

Small-scale mock-up to work out pagination when setting up the artwork 

A re-working of a one-off book of rubber stamp stencil illustrations I made a couple of years ago. I deconstructed the original book and scanned each page before enlarging the layout and getting it digitally printed as flat A2 sheets (by the excellent printed.com). I created new stamp-stencil artwork for the title bellyband. The format is a double concertina, which took a bit of head scratching to get the pagination correct. But it’s a very pleasing, solid structure once assembled. Scalpel at the ready to cut down and make up the first ten...

Leaf Labels

Leaves printed in yellow and blue neon ink, labels printed in midnight blue

Work in progress

Endpapers printed with photopolymer stamp made from a hand drawn leaf pattern

Five finished copies 

A new book – cataloguing of the names of different leaf shapes. I used the rubber stamps I carved for my first book ‘Autumn Leaves – A Pocket Guide’ but printed them with my new neon inks. Printing the blue on top of the yellow makes a good bold green, with the added bonus of extra colours when slightly mis-registered. The colour prints well on the heavy Somerset velvet paper. The labels are photopolymer stamps I made, and printed in midnight blue. Endpapers are also a photopolymer stamp I created from hand drawn leaf pattern. The neon yellow ink prints really well on bright blue paper… makes your eyes jump. Cloth covered boards for the cover with a book cloth label and pamphlet stitching. To be added to the shop very soon...