The brief set for the print project was to create a folding book on an easopes fable, i chose to base mine on "The wind and the sun".
The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said: "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin." So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the
traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.
moral-Kindness effects more than severity
Each week I will be assess myself using these bandings.
0-29
no show - did not try
30-39
failed to understand
40-49
minimal application, 40 is a pass
50-59
satisfactory
60-69
really good
70-79
great
80-100
Excellent - perfect
Date:
How many Prints did you make this week? 3
How many of these taught you something new? 1
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 5
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 59
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 55
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 60
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 67
Active participation in taught sessions: 69
date:
28/09/2010, today was our first lesson of print, we were mainly reading through the fabels and making quick prints to get back into the process
How many Prints did you make this week? 4
How many of these taught you something new? 3
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 7
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 60
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 57
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 60
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 63
Active participation in taught sessions: 70
date:
5/10/2010, I picked my fable today and research other illustrators and the images they created, the prints were relating to brain storms I did in the week.
How many Prints did you make this week? 4
How many of these taught you something new? 3
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 7
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 60
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 57
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 60
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 63
Active participation in taught sessions: 70
date: 12/10/2010, I was thinking a lot a about the process today and understanding why different ones work better for different prints.
How many Prints did you make this week? 5
How many of these taught you something new? 5
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 8
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 65
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 70
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 55
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 55
Active participation in taught sessions: 73
date: 19/10/2010, today I focused more on developing the characters of the wind and the sun and understanding what I want to illustrate about them.
How many Prints did you make this week? -
How many of these taught you something new? -
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? -
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: -
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: -
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: -
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: -
Active participation in taught sessions: -
date:
26/10/2010, this week was reading week so i made a lot of colographs and linos ready to print next week, feel like my works focused a bit more now!
How many Prints did you make this week? 8
How many of these taught you something new? 7
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 8
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 75
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 70
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 68
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 65
Active participation in taught sessions: 74
date:
02/11/2010, I feel like my prints are really coming together now, I've printed out the plates I made last week and worked into the colographs with watercolour, think the effect works well.
How many Prints did you make this week? 5
How many of these taught you something new? 3
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 7
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 68
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 66
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 73
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 75
Active participation in taught sessions: 64
date:
09/11/2010, I took my own photographs in the week and started to use them to influence my work.
How many Prints did you make this week? 4
How many of these taught you something new? 3
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 6
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 57
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 61
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 70
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 62
Active participation in taught sessions: 55
date: 16/11/2010, got a bit lost with my prints and where there going as they are all different process, I need to work on this by next week!
How many Prints did you make this week? 3
How many of these taught you something new? 2
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 5.5
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 54
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 60
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 63
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 67
Active participation in taught sessions: 62
date: 23/11/2010, looked into book layouts more this week, so didn't focus on printing as much.
How many Prints did you make this week? 5
How many of these taught you something new? 3
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 6
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 65
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 69
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 69
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 62
Active participation in taught sessions: 62
date: 30/11/2010, I starting considering layout this week and making extra prints to work with the book design.
How many Prints did you make this week? 5
How many of these taught you something new? 3
How many hours did you spend in the PrintmakingWorkshop? 6
Competence in practical printmaking techniques: 65
Thoughtful and imaginative use of printmaking: 69
Visual Sensibility; understanding and expressing ideas in images: 69
Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: 62
Active participation in taught sessions: 62
date: 07/12/2010, I focused completely on the final images and modifying, reprinting for better quality.
the work
the lino prints above where my first quick idea, nearly all of aesop's fabels use animals with strong personalities and characters, although in the wind and the sun they both have clear personalities in reality there not actually something you normally see, by giving them physical features to work with I think it will make the book a lot stronger.
I've taken influence from the book above, where they have embossed the pages...although i didn't get it exactly right with "the sun"! I've overlapped different materials and used cut out lettering to create a plate for a collograph, this initial idea was to perhaps base the book entirely around the text to show the narrative.
I found this image in a magazine, its an advert for shoes, but I think it could work well if I interpreted it into the character of the traveller, by having different images of him worked over the top of each other as he moves along.
Coming back to my thought of giving the the wind and the sun personalities, i came up with this idea to modernise the story a lot more by connecting them to society today. With the wind being made by an old man blowing on a pipe, and the heat from the sun being the heat of a hairdryer from a young woman. although in my head the idea seemed to work i think it could change the meaning of the story to much, and take away the strength of the moral.
I quickly took these photographs while I was on my way home, at a lot of red lights... it was just before it started really heavily raining, I think they can be used to illustrate the sky when the wind is blowing, something that i've had trouble picturing until now.
Looking at the images above, i think that its more the effect that the wind has on objects surrounding it than the actual wind itself, this is what i was considering with the print above.
Im going to work into this collograph using watercolour, the image was made using glue and imprinting onto the paper, the top was supposed to be slightly darker than the bottom, but i think i should be able to correct it by adding in deeper and lighter colour shades.
This was taken from a book I found "paper-folding designs" this was taken from a Japanese collection. my original thought on it was to have the traveller walking down and around the page, but i've also taken the fact that it is a print of a map. I've started to look into weather maps and think a strong idea could be taken from printing over the top of them.
these are some experiments above of where i've picked out tourist spots of London and highlighted the weather surrounding them.
for these prints I have been working on the sun element of the fable, I think the bottom image works best, with the composition I am hoping to add in a print of the man walking across the base of the image, I think this would work best in lino, perhaps the scale should be kept small, this has also given me the idea to perhaps have the man as a constant theme throughout the prints? with the background in different techniques and the man kept the same, giving the book more of a continuity.
my photographs
here are some of my own images taken of tourist spots in london, by having my own images its helped me focus my work a bit more:
I feel I need to work a bit more outside of just the print process, the images above are just quick illustrations of layout ideas and the images I took. By just working in pen it gave me a better understanding of the effects I want to produce through print, hopefully helping me when I come to print!
with all of the prints above I have been considering the idea of reprinting the same scene with different effects of the sky, after printing I am still not sure if this would loose the tactile effect of having lots of different images like I originally planned, but I have found a new technique of blending more than one colour, so it definitely helped with my understanding of the process.
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As I said before I think the idea of having the a figure slowly changing as the pages pass by will work strongly with the backgrounds, by making these figurative prints its guided me into the idea of using photoshop and editing my images, something I've not tried before but I think it will push my presentation of the book up.
I do want to consider adding text into my book, above I tried sewing the narrative, although I like the tactile effect it gives, because I will be editing my images and they won't be the originals I just don't think the same appreciation for something so handmade would be had by the audience.
just a sketch up of the fan idea I've mentioned before, the little men walking across would change slightly with each one, along with the weather in the sky, am I getting to complicated?!
lucky I actually practised this idea first! it totally didn't come out how I was expecting, on paper it seemed like i would be able to connect all my images.....looked so simple, but when I made the prototype above i realised a lot of the prints would be lost by the closing at the bottom and it just doesn't fan out as much as I need. I can see how my prints are all going to work together to illustrate the fable when im finished, its just getting there with the right binding im struggling with at the minute...
research
so, last week I was struggling with the layout and wondering wether my prints will work together, then in print today we were able to look at a collection of handmade book and unusual bindings. This definiatley helped me out and was a big influence on my work. The book just above this was by otto, with pretty much every page a different format and style, and I thought it worked really strongly, you could tell the thought gone into which pages goes where from colour to texture. It gave me the extra boost I needed to go against the tradition of keeping with the same illustration style throughout.
found this image looking for inspiration when it comes to the binding, I think it would juxtapose with the images really well...but then I thought that with the fan so until I test this one out and modify it to fit my own book im not getting my hopes up!
- also i keep trying to stop myself with taking my ideas too far and complicating them so I get lost near the final, but if this could somehow spin I love how it would relate to the fable, the wind being the book spinning and the sun when looking down on it, feel like im getting somewhere now.
mock up books...
okay, I no its the obvious one but if it all goes wrong I need a final book and even though its simple it works for most books out there.
starting to get a bit more technical with my folding, this mock had the pages only small,and i've taken the idea from the japanese book I mentioned at the very begining. each page is about 3inches square, the idea would be to have the figure walking down the pages, if I had a lot more time I would love to try this out, as I think the narrative would flow so well. but I just don't have the time to make this look as effective as I would want.
this was something I just came up with while making my prints and thinking about the placement of the figure. It originally came from a book I read when I was little, it was based around christmas and pulled forward, showing different layers behind. My idea was to have the figure at each level of the fable changing, but I obviously new how I wanted it to look, I can't see how this can be translated so the viewer would understand.
it worked! although this is compeletly rough, it actually already seems to make sense as a design. I no I said I wanted it to spin but at the minute I just want a folded book, if I have time once its complete I will definitely give it ago.
- the one negative to this design is that it cant really close as it will be to thick with all the images, hopefully if I can get it to spin I can use it as a positive.
Its finished!
this is the completed book of my fable...finally! I was able to use a metal rod down the centre that is stuck into clay to make the book spin and give the effect I wanted. Overall I think the book achieves the idea of reinventing the fable into a folded book by using print. The book took a lot longer than I imaged because of the editing that was needed to make each image equal in size, there are still a couple of things I would of done differently, like using a different glue as it did start to come unstuck. But I really feel I learnt a lot about both print and book making through this project and hope the final shows that!
