Creative Book Design- Part Four: Altered books -Exercise 1: Paper/ephemera
Collect a wide variety of paper samples and other paper ephemera across a range of weights, textures and surface finishes. This builds on your previous paper sample exercise from Part Two. Aim to collect a wide range of unprinted papers, such as blotting paper, tracing paper, lined paper, graph paper, rice paper and handmade papers. Look out for papers with special print finishes – metallic, embossed, shiny and matt. Aim to collect paper that is light as a feather and heavier, more dense, paper. Collect papers that will run through a conventional desktop printer, or indeed the print output options you have available to you – this may include board. In addition, collect paper ephemera that you find interesting or that appeals to you in some way. This may include tickets, flyers and similar printed material or mementos or souvenirs of exhibitions, occasions and days out. Create a stack of these papers for use in your next few exercises.
I have collected a fair amount of paper/textures/prints over the length of this course, some for personal work and some which has been used for assignments. I looked through the boxes and pulled out my favourite textures.
I have a few envelopes collected in various brown tones. I particularly like the colours of these styles of envelopes and am unsure as to why so much.
These are book covers pulled apart from their binding that I have kept to collage with. I usually use these as the backgrounds to a collage but will pull apart the front material as they have interesting textures. The blue interwoven stitch is my favourite. This makes me think of religious buildings and has an air of importance to it. I feel as if this is because of the quality and an almost delicate material that I associate it with a church or something sacred.
The texture created by the ripped over envelope is very interesting to me. I also like the reverse side, showing various folds and areas of glue/change in texture. These naturally remind me of birthdays/present giving and time with friends and family. They also remind me of important events such as exam results or first bills etc, which is a mixture of emotions. These envelopes are great to collage with and can be done solely on their own in various tones and textures.
This paper was collected from a package and was used to protect the item inside. The texture reminds me of tyres, in particular mountain bike tyres and times riding to school. The individual squares aligned is oddly satisfying to look at and produces depth when used to print. I have previously attempted to run this material though an inkjet printer (an old , hardly functional one) in hope to break up where the image was printed onto the material, but this didn’t work and as expected just jammed. I could attempt a screen print which would give me more control in the future.
Here is some standard 120-50gsm white paper I have altered. The paper was dragged along the floor and then cooked for different times, which produced many interesting textures. These pieces of paper bring a sense of disgust to mind. This may be due to me knowing how they were produced, but the speckles look like water, blood or even a sneeze.
Perhaps I could alter my book for this assignment in a similar way, using heat/burning elements?
I have a lot of this tissue paper material collected from inside trainer boxes/clothing. The material is hazy/slightly transparent, paired with a very interesting texture after it has been scrunched up it looks great. I use this as under layers for paintings as it creates interesting textures. Thinking about it’s almost transparent properties, it could be interesting to incorporate into my altered book, revealing or covering elements. This material reminds me of working (I sell clothing/trainers) which is fun to me. It also has a cold feeling, due to it’s colour and texture it makes me think of cracked ice on windows/car windows in particular.
I have various thicknesses/colours/textures of paper that can run through a printer. The methods I have found for making some of them work produce different results most times.
The more standard white papers work normally but all have different textures. The paper with larger ridges is a hand made paper (not by myself) and the other is Arches printing paper.
The coloured card/tissue paper are very bold and not colours to be used a lot. I have attempted printing onto these materials using an inkjet and a xerox printer which both has good results, especially when covering most of the paper with ink and only leaving smaller amounts of colour. In order to make the tissue paper print I let it rest on some acetate so the printer thinks that it is thick enough to go through.
A while ago on Instagram I came across the artist Luca Pierre. His work utilises paper, altered paper and appears painterly, despite not using
paint directly. This was intriguing to me, so I used spray paint and various chalks to create similar textures. My favourite being the almost illuminous yellow. By accident, some of the paper ripped, which created a great texture and contrast between the block colour and the white rip. Pierre’s expressive style is something I will keep in mind when creating my altered book.
I like the orderly aesthetic of receipts/tickets/invoices. They are usually produced with a sans serif typeface and aligned. There is something interesting about the individual textures of the numbers/letters and how they have printed onto a particular paper or material. An example of this printing is the ‘2227c’ printed onto cardboard. The edges of the numbers are jagged and non-perfect. I have also collected handwritten notes by people or found on the street/in packages. I love different peoples handwritten styles and the contrast between type/handwritten. This is something I could explore further, again a desire to combine digital and physical techniques.
Whilst looking through boxes/collating these materials to photograph, I knocked a mirror from the side, which smashed into a pile on the floor. I thought that this was almost intended as it created great looking shards of mirror which I can now use to collage with. The mirror is relatively thin and not too heavy as individual pieces. I hadn’t considered a material such as this before so I am pleased with this accident. It also makes me wonder what other abnormal materials I could use.
When thinking about the extended connotations of a mirror, the term ‘reflect’ comes to mind as a mirror literally reflects its surroundings. ‘Portray' comes to mind, when thinking of looking into a mirror, it is almost a portrait.
These are elements of old posters taken down from walls of underpasses and outside clubs/pubs. It is almost a running joke whenever friends see rubbish or a poster hanging off a wall that I will take it/a part of it/ a photo of. My favourite texture collected is the black and white poster. The contrast between the black and the aged white is bold and shows age/deterioration.
I continued to test with the paper and textures I have collected and included different materials such as paint and an acetone printing technique. I wanted to produce work in a more abstract expressionist way and tested with digital editing for potential screen prints.
I limited myself to a few textures/colours in order to have a more straight forward direction and to test what can be done with these materials.
