Unpacking the Found Papers Book

... presented as post-hoc rationalisations, these thoughts here in fact came well before yesterday's post. Well - thoughts? Hm, not quite - some hand, brain, eye coordinations which led to some sustained exercises in general craftiness...

[some spillover from the day seems to be going on: writing conference papers is what I've been doing over the past few days, and it looks as if academic practice translates into blog posts, my apologies: this is distinctly wafty... as in fact the paper still is... but bear with me]

A book format such as the loosely, with a string, strung together palm leaf booklet [talked about here] seemed much better than merely a two-dimensional canvas for the found papers.

The string acquired some beads - paper beads, made out of some of the found papers too.
I came across paper beads first on etsy. They are so simple to make and can be customised into different shapes, but more importantly colour-coordinated sooo easily: just use the same found papers, coloured papers, and hey presto: there's your perfect accompaniment.

Paperbeads

An instruction for the beads is here. They are cut strips of paper, rolled tiedly together on a skewer or similar, then fixed with glue/ gloss medium to acquire some strength. And that's it.

The cover is some left over postcards, covered in more found papers - some of the yellow envelopes I got from Australia are perfect - there's some stamping, some addressing and general texture. Again, glued on with decoupage medium, covered with decoupage medium and thoroughly dried it's pretty sturdy and looks generally undestructable (though that's deceptive I suppose).

Inside cover with title

Title and signature go inside the cover. It's rather conventional, as far as collage titles go, but good nonetheless: This one is called Moin Olle: Sondervig. Slupsk - Taken from some text on the collage, and the two most outlying place names from the map on the back.

Half the postcard format is perfect for a good cover of the booklet.

This observation leads to the final, most important (?), point on the format... but that'll take a bit longer, so it'll have to wait til tomorrow...

All my underpaintings

I made up another batch of pastel supports over the weekend. I experimented a few different ways of making my own boards after I found that ready-made boards where both rather expensive but also too even in surface for the kind of texturing I was looking for.
For the past few paintings I've been using large sheets of simple grey boards cut in half, so that I end with a good sized 50x70 cm boards. I gesso these with simple white emulsion twice, then add a layer of equal parts emulsion, pumice powder for texture and water with a broad brush, sand this down if I want a smooth board or leave it with broad brushstrokes if I want a stronger texture, and finally paint a top layer of acrylic paint, pumice powder and water (again equal parts).
The colours I've mostly used are lemon yellow, raw siena or raw umber, but my last batch also included some muted green (still trying to find something for Scottish summer landscapes) and warm yellow ochre.




Detail of surface texture on board