Whew!

I finally (3 weeks later than planned) finished the last illustration for Amelia and Reginald today. Several in the second batch of drawings didn't make good plates, so I had to rework them and send them back. Which left me further behind with the 2 baffling images, an Angel Choir, which Reginald is asked to imagine as he tries to wake Amelia from her comatic state, and Crossing the Alps in the style of 18th c. gentry, being carried in chairs.

I have taken them out and put them away several times, but finally thought of trying to incorporate music into the choir image. Something funereal? After looking through the hymnal and on line, I decided on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, a melody anyone who reads music is likely to recognize, and another non-18th c. element for the pseudo-ness of the book (like Micky and Minnie on Amelia's bed). I also divided up the group to make the image more vertical to fill space at the end of the chapter, and changed their faces and poses a bit so they are not all playing instruments and they are all singing.

The final bugaboo was the image of A&R crossing the Alps, being carried as gentlefolk were. It's a double-wide illustration that will be folded and stitched in between signatures.

Now to finish printing and start assembling! Here's hoping everything else goes without bumps!

Chapter 1 image

Amelia and Reginald meet in St. James Park, the image for Chapter 1.

I went to Corner Brook last Sunday to make polymer plates with the help of David Morrish at Dead Cat Press. We went to work Monday morning, and by the end of the day the plates were made for all the completed drawings. Tuesday I worked on this drawing, and we made the plate Wednesday evening. I drove home on Wednesday with a pile of plates ready to print!

Spent Thursday and Friday getting ready for Open Studio this weekend, and this afternoon I printed 3 of the images onto the text pages, 110 or so copies of each. I'm hoping for an edition of 100...

Sketches

Back to working on the illustrations for Amelia and Reginald. Here is Reginald, despondent and  refusing to eat.

Where there is space at the ends of chapters, I am adding small illustrations to fill in. These are two sketches for Amelia's wet clothes that she takes off in a room at an inn, after surviving a shipwreck.

Neither of these is quite right, but none of the illustrations will be complex, detailed images. They are meant to suggest or be an echo rather than show minutiae...

The luggage is for the chapter following, when the servants arrive with A&R's luggage, and a new wig for Reginald.

I haven't worked on the illustrations for a week, and now see several things I want to change. It's always good to back off for a bit and come back to a project with fresh eyes.

From the Studio: illustrations

From the Studio: illustrations

illustrations

While I am slowly assembling the edition of Making Books (not bombs), I have turned to completing a project that has languished in the studio for MUCH too long.

My friend Rudolph Ellenbogen's pseudo-eighteenth-century love story, The True History of Amelia and Reginald, has been off and on the back burner since 2005 (ouch!) when my brain shorted out while trying to grasp the style of the time (think Hogarth) and simulate it in my drawings. Over the past 8 years, I have taken it out, reread the story, looked at background material, and done sketches, only to tear my hair, rend my clothing, and vow to hie myself to a monastery to avoid confronting the sad realization that I am doomed to failure for false pride.

I do love the story, and I do love my friend Rudolph and his lovely wife Alane, and having survived the struggle of creating Making Bread (not bombs), I feel up to taking a more equanimous view. I promised that the book would be finished in October, and to that end, I am keeping the drawings out in the dining room, where I can spread everything out on the table. I have sorted the illustrations and reference material into folders. To help keep myself focussed, I am going to add progress reports to my much-neglected blog. Below are the silhouettes for the frontispiece.

I will scan and post more soon...

Making Bread (not bombs)

Finally assembling Making Bread (not bombs), my book for Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here and Book Art-Object IV.

Five sections inkjet printed, laser cut and scored, then folded by hand and glued together, in a plain brown wrapper (Cave Paper) closed with linen twine.

You can see a video of the laser cutter at work on YouTube: http://youtu.be/3ms3G56xMJE