Spike Island Zine Fair Sat 31st October

Artists' Book and Zine Fair, Free entry
Sat 31 October, 1-6pm
followed by drinking, dancing, mingling in Spike Café til 9pm

more info here:
http://www.spike-island.org.uk/?q=events/bookandzinefair/2009

After searching through artist books websites and getting disheartened by page upon page of people trying to one up each other with their crazy designs I picked up a copy of Hand to Eye and found Tom Gauld. I read one of his mini books when Chiu brought us some examples in but I didn't think much about him until I went on his website and found his short comics which I felt my work related to not so much in style but the short narratives and pictorial one liners.

Taken from the Cabanon Press Website
I found this small comic of Gauld's after I wrote the one I'm about to show but if I had found it sooner I think I could have took some tips from it to help me write 'Things not to put on your face'. For such a broad title it took me ages to think of things that would actually be funny to illustrate and some of them are still a bit hit and miss. I indent to go back and redraw each panel adding shading and maybe colour. ( I have the hand writing of a cracked up spider so i might change the text )

(these are just some examples of panels for 'Things not to put on your face' not sure how I want to set it out yet.)

I like the openness of the 'things not to put on your face' idea but I've also been sketching out ideas for a few short stories. I've be looking at Greek mythology and thinking of other myths I could make a collection of. So far I've been playing with the story of Icarus.

"Icarus' father, Daedalus, a talented and remarkable Athenian craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in the place of Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos. Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea."(Taken from Wikipedia and edited slightly)

I took this story and twisted it turning Icarus and his father Daedalus into birds cornered in a room and held captive by a cat. Every time they try to fly away the cat wakes and pins them back down. They sit and wait for their death until a baby comes along and wakes the cat. Noticing the cat doesn't attack the baby Daedalus comes up with the idea to make wax bodies for them both to make themselves look human and escape. Using a nearby candle they pack wax around their wings and legs molding them into a human shape. They walk past the cat who wakes then ignores them until Icarus gets too excited by the thought of freedom and walks too close to the fire where the wax melts and the cat pounces.

This first sketch was the rough ideas for the wax bodies and the baby.
I used pencil and fine liner for the sketches and then calligraphy pens and acrylic in for the rough panel. I think the pen and inks give the feathers on the birds a much better look than just a fine liner.

And a rough sketch of how the first panel will be composted with the two cornered birds and the shadow of the cat.


And heres a sketch from Tom Gauld to tie everything together.

hiii.. ..i did some sketches scanned them in and used photoshop, experimented around with the colours, to see how these would look if they were screen printed.iv chosen to illustrate a book about shoes&the different styles.

These are Tymn Armstrong's illustration which i feel my work relates to.probably because of the bold colour and the composition of his work.These illustrated for Threadless.

i also loved Hilary Judd's artist book from the Tate Britain Artists book collection.

"Shoebox is a book containing drawings of all the shoes I own, drawn from above and below and housed in a minature shoe box. Shoes are the only garment we wear which retains the shape, the personality, the essence of the wearer. The shoes are a complete variety of shapes and sizes designed for different uses. Inviting the viewer to explore the differences between them whilst having to regard them all in the same category."
http://www.hilaryj.co.uk/books.htmlFinally just wanted to add iv been looking Andy Warhol's shoe illustration's,very inspiring http://www.dougsartgallery.com/Andy-Warhol-Shoes.html

Any Comments appreciated :)

Sideshow Curiosities

Hello everyone! This is my 1st artist's book on the theme 'collections', 'The Lottie Street Sideshow Curiosities':

You can see all the pages from those images, it's just a single sheet of paper folded, printed front and back so the bearded lady is kind of a poster inside. I'm re-doing the text on the banners as I think it's messy, and I've experimented with screen printing a section of it which I think looks good so I'm looking at simplifying the designs to print them (this is watercolour and so far I've had to print with 3 colours).

Also been looking for artists books in a similar vein to mine which I am inspired by, and I can't stop looking at William Blake's books:

He's one of my favourite artists. I love his work so much because of the beautiful fluid colours and the way that his text is as much a part of the book as the drawing, rather than one being used in support of the other. I've tried to do this too in my book by making all the words part of the images, for example in the banners. Although my style is more contemporary with bolder colours and not so realistic drawings, I draw a lot of inspiration from William Blake.

Magic Book Documents

The Magic Book, otherwise known as the Jacobs Ladder, is a fun fold both sided book. Download the two document files to find out more:
http://www.nihongomemo.com/resources/magicbook-instructions.doc
http://www.nihongomemo.com/resources/magicbook-template.doc

card again sorry

I have made the face less cluttered, better? :)

Final Xmas Card Design

Alterations made to text on tail, because I will be printing it at such a small size A6 I needed to make the text clearer. I also added more brown to the design to balance it out. Makes it bolder and improves the composition I think.. hee hee
what do you think?

Daisy

The Fourth Manchester Artists' Book Fair

The Fourth Manchester Artists' Book Fair

Saturday 7th November 2009

10.30am Guest Speaker David Faithfull

12 noon - 6pm Fair open to the public

11am - 4pm MMU Artists' Books special collection open

Sir Kenneth Green Library and Holden Gallery
Manchester School of Art
Manchester Metropolitan University
All Saints Campus
Oxford Road
Manchester

Guest Speaker David Faithfull 'Inkubator Project' at 10.30am in the Sir Kenneth Green Library, Lecture Theatre. See www.davidfaithfull.co.uk

Lucy May Schofield will host her very successful Bibliotherapy sessions throughout the day. See www.lucymayschofield.co.uk and www.lucymayschofield.blogspot.com

Fair opens 12 noon in the Holden Gallery, Grosvenor Building, Manchester School of Art

40 stands and the MMU special collection of artists' books

FREE ADMISSION

* Travel Information & Campus Map
* Online Gallery (from the 3rd Artists' Book Fair)

Enquiries: n.grant@mmu.ac.uk

2nd Sheffield Artists' book prize exhibition

http://www.bankstreetarts.com/

On the following link you can see my name under people that have contributed to the exhibition. They have my '5 minute Systematic Book'

If you go down to the bit that says '2nd Sheffield Artists' book prize exhibition - 8th October - October 31st' you can see a list of the contributors. No sure who the winners are yet. Have to wait and see :O)

http://www.bankstreetarts.com/SABP1.html

after Tate Britain, Bookartbookshop

after Tate Britain I'm heading off to:

bookartbookshop in Oldstreet! It closes at 7:00 pm - it's well worth the visit (bring some spare pennies and pounds)

http://www.bookartbookshop.com/

hi this is my current book it shows a collection of artifical

hearts.

iv been looking at old school anatomy books [not stricyly artist books but they have many similarities]

above by Bouglé, Julien from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/browse.html

The Centre for the Artist Book (a-c)

I love the simple visual concept of running a well known characteristic over an accordion spread. Note how the book is housed inside a cassette case

http://www.grahamegalleries.com/?page_id=263

This is the book I made for the 'One Week Brief'; it is made out of one sheet of paper, and is created using collage and drawing with different materials including indian ink, biro, and watercolours. For the collection, I chose to base my book upon the outfits/clothes I had worn in the past seven days. I'm happy with the outcome of the book, however have gone onto develop my ideas for my book so that the focus is more on the illustrations; therefore, I am still going to include collage in my work but I don't want it to be so much of a focus point.

I really like fashion illustration, so want to continue on with this theme for my artists book; instead of using the clothes that I had worn in a week, I have now decided to focus on the floral trend. I have now started to experiment with drawing techniques and different media, and have started exploring different materials or images that can be used within the illustrations and collage.

As of yet, I have not found any other book artists who focus on fashion illustration as a theme; if anyone knows of any, could you please let me know as it would be helpful for my research. I have found some artists who use the same media or techniques/processes as me, and who produce work that I am really inspired by. One of these artists is Sharon McCartney, who produces artists book out of existing vintage books.

Her work is all created using mixed media, and collage of paper and images to create each page of her book. I would love to create a book that is inspired by McCartney's book as I think each and every page would be exciting and interesting in their own way.

Screen Printed Christmas Card Design

Marmotte Yodeling
I know its not a book, but Im thinking I may use this character in a little series (booky)
Im going to hand screen print a load of these at A6 to make xmas cards.
Because its going to be printed very small I didnt want to over complicate it as that would be tricky to print neatly. I need them to be neat and tidy so people will buy them. I decided not to use an overlap as the brown and blue make a mucky green puddle colour and I wanted to try a more regimented design. I will be doing overlap in my next poster though.
would like to know what you guys think?
thanks Daisy

oh and my website www.whitewolfillustrations.com take a gander if ya please

Stuff to do by 19th October

All of you by now will know, that you have to post the following:

1, post examples of artists' books that you feel your work relates to and say how and why:

2, can you also post examples of your own work related to book arts

all files should be under 1mb large, in jpeg format + no wider than 1024 pixels, unless you wish us to scroll across