Rope of Words 18 - Tearing the paper.

My blog will soon be moving to a different address - www.limetreesstudio.com - I'll keep you posted.

I've now got my order of the first 25 sheets of paper. Each book will use 13 half sheets plus there'll be a set of prints on their own, plus with mistakes it can easily mean double the amount. One little spill or splodge in screen-printing and it's damaged goods!
I'm hoping to do a limited edition of 6 books, so might eventually use 100 sheets. Gulp!

Time to start tearing the pages. Just look at those beautiful deckled edges.
This is a proper paper tearing knife, also known as a "shoe knife" as it is (was?) used by cobblers and it's quite hardy with a rosewood handle. The blade tapers to fit the handle without any angles or curves which could wreck the paper if it got caught. My bone folder is an extra fine one to score the paper before folding and tearing, then to score it again to fold the folio in half.

I photographed the boned folder pointing at the watermark, which needless to say, you can't detect at all in a photo.

The torn edge is quite finely torn and shouldn't mess up the precision at the top and bottom like a deckled or roughly torn edge would. When you buy the sheets the top and bottom edges are torn in much the same sort of "neat tear".

P.S. Butternut soup tonight - a nod to Halloween - perhaps we should go to movies and skip all the poor little frightened kids running around in sheets dressed as spooks, scaring one another.

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Rope of Words 18 - Paper, Layout and update

I have chosen the Velin Arches (76cm x 56cm) because the deckled edges down the foredge are spectacular. I'll cut or tear each sheet in half to fold it for a page size 38cm x 28cm. The other fantastic thing about the Velin Arches is that the watermark is not very noticeable. If I find it worries me, I can always to an extra little embossed image in the bottom corner.

Here you can see how I have progressed with the layout from the top plan to the one below. The text will now be in a single column on the left page with a large decorative capital, and a square cut-out near the middle.

Progress on The Rope of Words so far: 

• Font lower case is designed - I still need to draw the Upper case and have the letters made into a font that I can type.
• Style of decorative capitals is planned - it will be a coloured screen-printed capital combined with blind embossing.
• Layout design of folios is designed.
• I have visited a professional book artist to make sure I'm on the right track and she will oversee my making a dummy book.
• Illustration ideas are falling into place, although I still need to do some life drawing and then stylise and design each page. 
• I have some ideas about the style of binding and cover design.

Now I'll start experimenting with one of the illustrations using screen printing and embossing and the rest of the Elva font design is becoming a matter of urgency. This is expensive to do because I'm not technically minded and will only design the letters, vectorise them and plan the spacing.

As soon as I have a number of pages on which I've experimented I'll bind them into the first dummy book.

Time to start tearing the paper. (A little shiver runs down my spine) 

I know, I know, it sounds nerdy and when it comes to paper I'm a total nerd.

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Rope of Words 17 - Choosing paper

For newcomers to the blog, I am following through on an artist's book, "Rope of Words",  from beginning to end: the trials, tribulations and hopefully the sucesses.

I went to *Falkiners Fine Papers to get started on some paper trials.
One of my problems was the watermark. I asked about it and some printmakers leave it on to show what good paper it is and that's a personal preference as it would be on the border anyway. However, in a book as big as Rope of Words, there would be a watermark on every second page. Nooooo.

I looked at various printmakers papers in a heavy 300gsm and experimented with blind embossing on damp paper and dry paper.
The blind embossing was only marginally better on the damp paper, (see top right sample) but not worth damping huge sheets. What a relief! (excuse the pun). I'll try dry embossing with a bit more pressure. Bear in mind that each sheet to be embossed is a half sheet 38cm X 56cm, so to screenprint then dampen might be asking for trouble.

Printing paper is 100% cotton and may be textured or smooth, but is more lightly sized than other artist's paper - great for printing on, but not even good for drawing on as it's a little like blotting paper.
Somerset Satin or Somerset Cold Pressed papers were both good, but the sheets have two watermarks on opposite sides diagonally.
BFK Rives was good but only had one really nice deckled edge and the other edge was a torn edge.
Hahnemuhle Etching paper was too soft and stuck in the stencil when put through the press.
Velin Arches is the sample above and the deckled edges (top left) are lovely. The paper is ivory and is exquisite to handle. The deckled edges ran parallel to the grain down both sides. The top and bottom edges were torn.

*Falkiner's Fine Papers was taken over by Shepherd's, a bookbinding company. Now they are moving: "After 25 happy years in Southampton Row, we are moving all the goodies to our bright & shiny new home in Gillingham St, Victoria" This is near Tate Britain but sadly not near the LX lectures anymore. :(

Online Bookbinding & Paper Store	Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe

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Rope of Words 16 - first prize

Megan entered her story in the Brtitish Fantasy short story competiton - this is the one that I'm working on as an artist's book and have been giving you updates in the process - well first prize - how fab is that. Have a look at Megan's website, especially her home page which is unique and fun.
http://www.megankerr.co.uk/
We heard she was shortlisted while we were in Dartmouth on holiday, so we've been waiting on tenterhooks since then.

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Rope of Words 14 - the Woman 3

Stylisation of a Woman:
I began looking at the work of artists whom I admire and writing down the essence of what their work embodied or what I really liked the most. I would not copy work, but studying it like this enables me to sharpen my thinking. If my end result can be placed next to my source material and I can hold my head high, that's fine. Anyway, I'll move onto the life model.

Here is my list:
Carroll Boyes: This is a range of functional cutlery and here are some drawings I made of some of the handles, with notes.

Hans Joachim Burgert:
I'm sure Burgert looked at Greek drapery and also medieval drapery because his figures definitely have that sort of feeling to them. I love the way he seems to start his faces. 

I'm going to show one more study, because I didn't get much further. I felt that I needed to get a move on with the model.

Ben Shahn: I've studied and analysed Ben Shahn's work quite extensively in my courses: "The Art of Ben Shahn", drawing with a kebab stick and ink, and using a combination of blind contour drawing with looking at the model / object. See the Workshop Gallery for what my students did..
Egyptian Murals: I think so many artists have been influenced by these wonderful murals. I have often borrowed their colour palette as well!
Chagall's floating bodies: Don't you just love the spatial ambiguities in Chagall's floating and semi-floating figures. And their bendy elbows!
Margaret Mackintosh: Klimt and Margaret Mackintosh were contemporaries - their figures have a lot in common, although the execution is very different.
Picasso's Guernica: The Picasso profile of the forhead running straight into the nose can be seen in lots of stylised figures. The bent head of that anguished screaming figure also occurs often.
The angels in the glass window in Coventry Cathedral: These look like scratched drawings of medieaval sculpture and yet...
Medieaval figures on buildings: Heads on pillars with stylised simplified bodies.
Aubrey Beardsley: He's quite naughty at times, but my goodness, his lovely fluid lines show such an understanding of the Japanese print. He's definitely made the style his own. (Japanese prints can be pretty risqué as well!)


Matisse: I'll come back to him...

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Rope of Words 13 - the Woman 2

Everyone has their typical style but having been away from life drawing for so long, I'm not too sure what mine is any more, and I have never stylised work much. When I first came to the UK in 1999 I was desperate to go back to life drawing, and found myself drawn to watercolours as usual. We had an excellent lecturer who made us do 20 minute drawings on full-size sheets of paper. I painted, and mighty fast. Here are the results.

The model was on her back with her legs up against the wall. I never seemed to use local colour, just wildly dipped my brush into any colour- dark for tones and light for tints. I also use a lot of pencil-work in my painting as you can see in the piece below.

But both of these are
a) three dimensional
b) they are complete and words could not really add value.
b) cannot be reproduced in a limited edition.

Okay, I have decided that she is to be nude and two-dimensional. I have now begun to look at stylised drawing and visited the Bayeaux Tapestry replica in Reading. I also looked at Burgert, Modigliani and Matisse.

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Rope of Words 12 - the Woman 1

Drowsy Substrata
Once upon a thunderstorm
A lightning flash away
Rain promised at the window pane
To take the heat away.
A candle there you brought me
Though the darkness did not flee
Yet it softened at the corners
And in warmth enfolded me.

In a blanket with a candle
At the centre of my heart
All secrets can be naked
In the privacy of dark.
The feelings that lie wordless
Subterranean in my soul
With a flash are in the open
And can still remain as whole 

Megan Kerr aged 17

This was painted with words of a poem by Megan, author of A Rope of Words. She wrote the poem when she was 17 and we were in the Northern Transvaal, South Africa and we had a house with a corrugated tin roof. When it hailed with hailstones the size of golf balls, or rained hard in the afternoon thunderstorms, the banging on the tin roof was dramatic and exciting. I love the way this expresses a very young woman's feelings:

But back to the subject: How to depict the woman in A Rope of Words?

I'm making myself quite vulnerable here because I haven't got to the answer quite yet - but I have a vision of what I think would work. My first idea of collograph which looked so promising in the "head" illustration that I've been using is just not viable because I can't get the finesse in inking up the letters that I would like. (see entry 19thJuly). It is also rather too monotone for me.
I wish I could do lithograph but that is a skill which takes a long time to master and I would rather look at the skills I already have. 

Then there is the visual concept of the drawing. I realised that I've seen the woman in my mind all along as nude. She is obsessed with finding her lost words and I can complete 10 illustrations without any other figures (although I may include the angels further down the line). Only the first one would have her lover with her. If I were to give her clothing it would probably be the typical 14thC style, and I think that would change the whole thing for me.  I would like the final prints to each be a "stand-alone work of art" not a picture to go with a story. Anyway, this is a fantasy story for adults (adults, not Adults)

I remember my art teacher in life drawing classes saying that there were two reasons why we drew the nude:
1) It is only humans who aren't covered in hair and we can draw and appreciate the muscles and understand the structure of the body.
2) Any type of clothing - other than drapery - dates a drawing to a time and place because of fashion .

One of my ongoing quests has been combining letters and art. Art, not illustration, and in such a way that there is an integrated whole, not some lettering with a picture next to it.
I believe that in order to combine letters and form, they both need to have two-dimensionality to work together or  both have three-dimensionality, not a combination of 2D and 3D.  

In the painting above, I made the letters 3-D to go with the watercolour.  I actually wrote Italic letters, cut them out and hung them in a fishing net to get the effect of the title. I was absorbed with kimonos at that stage, hence the title - Kimono, kimono, enveloping sweet form. Then I wrote the rest of the poem on curving lines to give an impression of depth.

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Rope of Words 11 - the text 4

My lower case is complete - Here is Elva...

and here is the text as a proper text block.

I feel that for poetry or prose that is written with musicality, a font that requires a little concentration is good. It helps you read slowly and enjoy the fine writing.
Elva's father said he thought I need to have a few more characters if I'm to name the font Elva, with umlauts

because after all, Elva is Swedish.
Cheeekeee!

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Rope of Words 10 - the text 3

When you give your very first letter design to a typographer for them to turn into a font, it's a bit like leaving your child at nursery for the first time.
You are very precious about her and she is your most beautiful creation to date. You hope the typographer will adore her more than any of the other kids and understand her little quirks and make allowances or smooth them over - okay, okay this comparison could get more twee and much worse, but I did feel this way a bit.

Philip sent me a sample of the first few letters of the text with designated typewriter keys to test with my photographic screen printing and here are the results. The 72dpi does nothing for this, but they looked great!

So, this is screen printed and so I know that the weight of the letter is right and that the results are very good even at12pt. I'm delighted and I now just have to design the rest of the lower case alphabet and the spacing and take it from there. Philip is happy to take it in stages and nurture my font into being!

And I have decided to name the font Elva after my Swedish granddaughter.

Here it is so far:

whooo-ooo!

This is Elva's second claim to fame. An international tennis player has also been named after her - not before her! Andy's friends are teaching English in Thailand and there is a young Thai tennis player just moving onto the international circuit. She wanted a more pronounceable name which also had a bit of credibility (I mean, something too English or Sloany wouldn't do!) They suggested Elva and she loved it!

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Rope of Words 9 - the text 2

I began to design the text thinking I should do it the way I did the cartouches for my orchids. I found some nice Zerkall Wavy paper and a soft pencil and began drawing.

But I spoke to Philip and he explained that he would have to vectorise them as there would be complicated textured edges.

Okay, let me explain about VECTORS and BITMAPS
If you have a digital letter in, say Word, you can change the size or stretch it (and wreck the proportions) . But you can't add a flourish or change the shape of anything other than by stretching it. That is because it is a bitmap, so you can't edit it..
In Illustrator, you can vectorise it by selecting "change to curves" and you'll see the nodes on the letter. The more complex the outline, the more nodes there will be.You can work with the nodes to change the actual shape of the letter in any way you wish. I've vectorised a typewriter font T and a plain one to show you where the nodes are.

If I were to do a letter in calligraphy and scan it, it would be a bitmap. In order to create a font, letters have to be vectorised, so you would import the scan into Illustrator and trace the outline with the pen tool. Each time you click to change direction you add a node. There is also a facility to create curves using "handles"" on the nodes.

Instead of doing the letter in calligraphy first and tracing it, you can just draw it directly using the mouse. So I drew a b in Illustrator - a beautiful shaded b! At this stage I realised that if this b was really tiny it might look nice typed once it is a font, but I could never reproduce the shading in screen printing.
So now I am going to begin to design a font especially for Rope of Words, using Illustrator and the mouse and "pen tool" and see if it is viable.

Philip Kelly - www.pkfont.co.uk - is happy to space and kern letters if the client gives them to him already vectorised, as mine will be, or to vectorise them for the client. It suited me to draw them on the computer because I could get a better uniformity this way.
This is going to be a huge amount of work!

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Rope of Words 8 - the text 1

In the beginning I wondered about how to do the text. Letterpress is wonderful but not possible for me, although I felt that screenprinting it would be good because I can do a limited edition of the book that is hand printed in ink on paper.

So, the choice of text: I know I want a large capital letter and probably two columns of writing. My first thought was to use the font called Travelling Typewriter because it is an honest font and it has a feel that it has been manually created. (Of course, one could philosophise and say nonsense, because it is a digital version of a typewriter)

So I tried a page using it. Apart from the fact that it was too jazzy for my eyes in such a large block of text, by then I was visualising simpler more abstract illustrations and this font was wrong for my new vision.

Back to the drawing board. What I would really like to do is work with text like I used in my watercolour book "Colours of the Kalahari". Here is a photo. It is in pencil using pressure-release, but it doesn't even photograph well - as you can see - so I have no chance of getting that effect using screen printing.

So now perhaps it's time to create a font based on this. I'm quite excited about this idea and phoned Philip Kelly who has worked with a number of calligraphers.

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Rope of Words 7 - Collograph 4

So, Horatio? Into the Gap!
This is my Artist's Book year and I am determined to research it thoroughly. I have now investigated collograph, spent many days on it, been disappointed and guess what?
While I was screenprinting my family surname document, I was waiting for the screen to dry and started chatting to the technician. I said I thought running an un-inked plate to emboss might be better, so we tried it.

te Dummmm...
this has possibilities!
(I will need to increase the depth and sort out the centre confusion.) 

Also I still really, really love the plates, especially after they have been inked up a few times and this may yet make fantastic covers as long as they are not mirror-imaged (with letters back to front) Also, they'll have to harmonise with the final artwork.

b.t.w. Last week, while I was waiting for my screen to dry last week it was in perfect timing to the Olympic torch passing along Iffley Road, so I dashed out, waited 10 minutes, witnessed the historic moment, waved and went back in to carry on printing. As Eyeore would have said "Unexpected and Gratifying"

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Rope of Words 6 - Collograph 3

Just as in the story, Rope of Words, I have to persist to achieve my goals.
I have printed my plates and quite frankly, I am disappointed. Please ignore the awful design - it was an experiment!

• It's too monochromatic for the story.
• It is not suitable for fine detail or crisp letterforms
• It is very hit and miss with inking up and printing. 

By the time I am ready to collograph, each folio will have been screen printed on two sides and could easily have undergone 8 screenings per folio on both sides. So to mess it up by getting a bit weary or inattentive during inking and burnishing is very real. My teacher agreed that it was risky to collograph after screening. I wondered about screening over the embossing.

See what I mean about the plate being more exciting! Being inked up often gives it patina as well.

So to be positive, there are some interesting textures for another day:

PVA dribbled over mount board in wavy lines

Letters peeled away from mount board - no PVA

Sandpaper cut out and glued on with gesso

Masking tape stuck on mount board and letters cut away from masking tape
The r has been PVA'd to add ink-resist

Scrim glued on using gesso

Carborundum glued on with gesso with spaces between 

Bits of torn overlapped masking tape

Plastic parcel tape stuck on mount board and letters cut away from parcel tape
No PVA to add ink-resist

Soft hemp cord glued to mount board.

As I said, I'd try to be transparent about what does and doesn't work for me.

Back to the drawing board! 

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Rope of Words 5 - Collograph 2

I invested in a two-day workshop on collograph.

• It's not worth learning this from books.
• Teachers give a far better insight into the process.
• The materials are supplied.
• You need to learn how to use the specialist equipment - e.g. the pressure of the rollers etc.

So on the first day, we made our plates and put shellac on them.
On the second day we inked our plates and printed from them.


Here is the demonstration by Janet Lueck, a talented collographer (!?) at the Oxford Printmaker's Co-op. 

The plate is inked up.

This is done using a wodge of J-cloth or a 4cm square of mountboard and the thick etching ink is pushed into every single crevice. As you can see everything gets very inky and it takes planning to "work clean"
Here is the etching ink. These days when I learn new processes I photograph materials as a visual record to save taking notes. Etching ink is different from lino ink as it's thicker and stickier (at least, I think that's the difference) It comes in tins or tubes.

The inks are oil based, so you need a good hand cleaner from a shop like Intaglio. You can use water-based inks at school, such as Caligo or Speedball, but they aren't quite as nice to work with.

The ink is wiped off again.

This is called "burnishing the plate". It is the same idea as etching except that there is a greater variety of texture. The parcel-tape areas (see yesterday's blog) wipe off to just about zero ink, while the sandpaper and carborundum areas hold the ink. This needs fine-tuning as every wipe mark gets printed, so it can easily take an hour to get the desired effect. You need practise and to understand the materials.

We used Somerset Satin printing paper 300gsm. 

100% cotton art PAPERS

Printing paper contains less size e.g. BFK Rives, Somerset Satin or Somerset Velvet.

Watercolour paper is finished by pressing between cold rollers and has the texture of the felts. It is sized but not excessively. If you write on it, it won't bleed, whereas Somerset will.

Hot Pressed paper is 'sort-of ironed' between hot rollers and has a very smooth texture so it's good for super-sharp calligraphy but is just not so yummy to handle, as it looks a bit like card. 
I'm a bit of a Philistine here in that I would always choose the feel of the paper over the sharpness of the letters.

The paper is soaked and excess water is rolled off

OKAY, so the paper is soaked for anything up to 20 minutes, then placed between a few layers of blotting paper and rolled with the huge roller to squeeze out excess water. At OCP there are very large soaking trays and piles of blotting paper.

Then the plate is laid face up on the printing press (whoops, I forgot to photograph it) and damp paper is gently positioned on the plate. Newsprint is laid on top. These are standard precautions so that the blankets don't get your ink all over them for the next poor person in the printing queue.

The plate is rolled through the press

Janet laid three blankets over the plate/paper/newsprint and rolled the printing press over them. 
If anyone can recognise a 50's washing machine with rollers: well it's similar but much bigger, heavier and designed for printing large sheets of paper. Which makes collograph inaccessible without a printing press*

When Janet picked up her print, the ink had transferred - see picture on the left, and the print was embossed. The plate is on the right, print on the left.

I am sure you will agree that we have two works of art here, the plate and the print.
The plate is cleaned with ordinary cooking oil (not extra virgin olive oil - a waste!) There is always a residue of ink which gives the plate it's patina.

Back to my Rope of Words - I am concerned that this process is too monochromatic for this book, but I'll give it a bash and try to introduce more colour as I did in "Head". I do think its a great process though.


* There is a small home /school printer designed for collographs called "The Major-George A2 portable printer press" www.majorgeorge.co.uk
Kim Major George has also written a comprehensive book on collograph which you can view on her website.

Rope of Words 4 - Collograph 1

Here is my first trial plate.
S on left: This is built from mountboard with the recessed parts "peeled" away, between the trellis. The S is painted in PVA to resist the ink.
S on right: The S was cut out of thin card and glued on, while the plant stem on the S was peeled away. the middle has wallpaper stuck to it.

After making the plates they are sealed with shellac, which can be home made or bought ready-mixed as "Button Polish" To make it, you mix shellac flakes and methelayted spirits. Either way brushes are cleaned with meths. I bought the button polish as a good hardware store in the varnish section.

I then did a plate which actually has a muddly design as I was trying everything to test different surfaces. I think there are too many trials in one piece, but we'll see what happens when I print from it. I was trying out lettering in particular. The black is carborundum or iron filings and it and the sandpaper bit would come out very dark.The shiny brown is plastic parcel tape which comes out very light as the ink gets wiped off it easily.

After shellacing it, I wrote on the plate with a CD pen to photograph as a record.

I'll give the list of surfaces when I show the results (if they are showable!).

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Rope of Words 3 - thumbnails

My script has 10 chapters and is an adult fantasy story, so I thought an intro. illustration + 10 + cover is ambitious enough (although 22 illustrations would be nicer).
If I use heavy paper such as Somerset Satin 300gsm, I think I could have one folio per "section" of the book. Each page would be between A4 and A3 in size.

Here is the first thumbnail of a possible layout of a typical folio
Page size: 28cm X 34.5cm.
margins: 3cm on sides, 2cm at top, 5cm at base.
I don't think I'll go for the 15mm on the inner margins to make up 3cm, but might do 2.25cm to make up 4.5cm combined inner margins. Something to think about.
3
Page 1 and 4: Title and a line of words running along the bottom of the pages (the rope of words) 
page 2 and 3: Illustration on page 2, text with Illuminated cap. on page 3
If I did Collograph I could use a typewriter text which has a natural feel about it and could be screened nicely. I've just used Head in the meantime for the thumbnail.

But then I started thinking a bit more creatively. What about a cut-out so that the "chapter heading" is arbitrarily placed and the rope of words running all over page 1 & 4. In this case, the illustration would have to be on page 3.
Here is the second thumbnail of a possible layout of a typical folio

I'll keep mulling over this.

And the latest news:
In the meantime I have visited two galleries, one local and one in Hampshire with my orchid giclées and both have offered me space and taken the cards. Dolphin Art would like to have an exhibition with one or two other flower artists and demonstrations and the other gallery would like to put me in with a group exhibition to mark the Christmas / Autumn season. I'm going to have to produce a few more water colour pieces to have some originals. I have just stretched two sheets of paper 50cm square and will pop out to the farm shop to get some Sea Thistles to paint. I'm very happy about this. Don't worry calligraphers, there will still be lettering happening!

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