I had big plans for this summer. I really did. Non-stop printing printing with maybe some home and studio organization thrown in for good measure. Some how that's not exactly how things are going. Despite my good intentions I seem to have been hit with a giant case of the post-grad school lazies. For me, this involves watching a lot of movies and TV on Netflix, reading a ton of semi-worthwhile novels and spending a significant amount of quality time with the PS3. Ahhhh, the life of an entertainment junkie.
As you may have guessed all of these distractions mean that work has progressed very slowly indeed on my book project. However, I have picked out a paper, made some clearer decisions about the binding and played around with a little bit of printing. Here are the results thus far....
For the base pages, I'm printing an old wallpaper pattern in a very light iridescent ink. This pattern will be on every page and will hopefully serve as a unifying element. The colors of the pages will change as you move through the book. Since there are very specific references to time of day (or passage of time) in the text, I 'd like the color of the pages to start off a gray-blue (for morning), progress to a brighter blue (as seen above) and then move into an light orange color for sunset. The colors will all be printed as a gradation across the page, which looks very nice when it's done but certainly leads to more potential mess-ups during the process.
I have not decided if I will print the other elements separately and collage them on the base pages or if I will print everything directly onto the pages. There are pros and cons to both. I finally decided that I need to get the base pages printed so I can SEE the colors and the look before I make my choices. I keep trying to have everything perfectly laid out before I get into any major printing and have finally come to the conclusion that it's not working for me with this particular project.
In other art related news, I designed and printed wedding invitations for my lovely friends Amanda and Scott. Please excuse the crappy photos, I took them with my phone. Better ones will follow soon!
I had a lot of fun with this project although again it highlighted a major flaw in my ability to collaborate or work with clients. I have a very difficult time expressing how the color is going to look in my final piece. I know (roughly) what it will look like but somehow I haven't come up with a way to translate whats in my head in a way that makes sense to others. To make matters worse i often switch colors on the fly as I print if my first attempt doesn't go as planned. hmmmm.....I don't really know what I intend to do about any of this but I suppose it's good to be self-aware, right?
Anyway- future plans.....more work on the book and another cover collaboration with Furniture Press!