A study group is what we call a monthly (typically) gathering of artists (in this case members of the Chicago Calligraphy Collective) that meet for the purpose of sharing ideas, techniques & recent projects. It's a combination of food, friendship, discussion and actually doing some fun creative things together. We learn a lot from one another! The South side group recently started up again after some time on hold, and with some new members! We thought we'd start off with a project we can all do together: an alphabet book. For those who don't know what might mean, each member of the group was assigned 4 or 5 letters, numbers and signs (@&?!) and took a few months to experiment with fun ways to interpret them. We used unusual and also traditional tools and in the end had to come with 9 copies of each page of our assigned characters (below).
The second part of this project was to create a book to keep them all. We had done a book using a simple Japanese stab binding a few years ago and, having just experienced my first go a Coptic binding, I suggested we use that. Coptic binding allows the book to open flat, and as we planned to use these books for reference, it seemed like a good idea. (Also great books to use for journals and sketchbooks!) Another advantage of Coptic binding is that you can literally use anything for the covers, as long as you can drill holes through it for stitching.
We took one month and tried a technique using a Modeling Paste medium on top of cardboard and then used various tools and textured items to create texture and pattern in the paste. Once dried, acrylic paints can be washed or rubbed over the dried medium for fabulous effects. For our July meeting, we brought our covers and pages and assembled them. A few of our members were leery of the process, but everyone did a great job and produced some beautiful books. Some even want to explore bookbinding further! So do I! (I wish I had close ups of books other than mine. I had to take mine outside in the sun on another day to get a better image that shows details.) We decided to bind blank page signatures and adhere our pages with scrap-booking adhesive. This way we are able to have blank pages to add letters that inspire us in the future.
Below is a close-up of the front cover of the book I made.
back cover, below
Post a Comment