05/07/2006
AltTxt: "Luminous, beautiful, bright"
At long last, a chance to post some more pages from my altered text project. I'm nurturing a new routine at this time, in which I ink a new page and gesso a previously-inked spread each day. I'm still scrambling to fit in coloring/painting time, but it's good to have progress of some degree being made on a more regular basis for this project.
« Pages 78 & 79 »
Media for page 78: gouache and watercolor on a gesso base, with gel pen spiral doodles.
Media for page 79: watercolor and colored pencils on a gesso base. This is the page that taught me (the hard way) that even permanent Pitt pen can be water soluable when the pen is used over gesso. :o
Text:
Step back.
Quietly he managed to hold off from (I assumed) a fever so high.
I was distressed, abrupt, pontifical.
...but of course...no doubt...
I tried to talk.
The silence was scary...long...long...
« Pages 68 & 69 »
Media for this spread: watercolor, colored pencils and a fluorescent highlight marker on a gesso base. This spread was colored before I was regularly sanding the gesso, so it shows a lot of texture, and I used a white eraser on the margins (and text balloons) after the scan was made, so the pages look a little cleaner than this shows.
Text:
Running chances to make the goal.
Risky.
Suddenly puzzle, danger, risks.
Russian roulette.
Dangerous risk.
Was love toast? toast?
Suddenly...freaked-out...have to...stop.
Don't.
No.
--interrupt--
« Pages 58 & 59 »
Media for page 58: ballpoint pen and wax crayon. I positioned the eight squares first, then sought the text within those squares. It forms a rather staccato delivery, but I find it works out here. The hatched lines were done with blue and green ballpoint, cross-hatched within the squares. Lighter shades of blue and green crayon were colored over the hatching in the center and border areas. This is the first use of crayon in the book, but probably not the last.
Media for page 59: watercolor over a gesso base, followed by streaks of gel pen in the outer sections.
Text:
struggle...don't start...
don't start...vivid...
sorry...to sneak under order...
head off...and couldn't know...
I never would have the answer.
I'd seen! I'd seen! through a sudden high fever...
But receiving absolutely nothing admitted.
« Pages 3 & 4 »
Media for these pages: watercolor, gouache and colored pencil on a gesso base. Despite how it looks here, these two pages do not face each other as a spread but are back-to-back and together form the very short Prologue. Page 3 is the first text page of the book, the one I initially stared at for over an hour before flipping through the book for an easier place to begin. Six months later, the page (and its verso) fell together with surprising and satisfying ease. Sometimes it pays to wait.
Text:
I lived.
Peaceful, curling dark mists.
Camelot.
I never expected I could open.
Luminous, beautiful, bright, he sang out love, a magic message of matters of life and death, extravagantly to change my life.
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Technorati Tags: altered books, art journals, palimpsest, altered text, mixed media
18:45 Posted in Project:AlteredText1 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: Altered Art
Comments
You say "I ink a new page and gesso a previously-inked spread each day."
I don't understand! (I have been not understanding many things all day!) It sounds to me as if you create a page and then gesso over a page you created earlier. Huh?
Please 'splain. (As Ricky Ricardo would say. Who knows why I am being inhabited by a fictional, Cuban, male, bandleader, but there you have it...)
And, as is so often the case, I love your stuff. I jump starts me on sluggish days.
Posted by: CrimsonCrow | 05/11/2006
Welcome again, CrimsonCrow! :) Let's try it this way:
1. Each day, I ink a new page.
2. Each day, I gesso a previously-inked spread (i.e. two facing pages).
I had over 6 chapters already inked (words selected and marked) when I first began writing of this project back in mid-December. After inking, the general steps are gesso, base color, finish color, refresh the ink, then scan. Very rarely does a page go through these steps "all in a row"...I typically work in several parts of the book at once. I gesso a spread in the morning, I ink a page in the evening. Some days, I manage to fit in some time for adding color, and eventually, a few pages are ready for scanning.
At the time I began this new routine (filling in my gluebooking time), I had more pages inked than I had pages with gesso. Since I've been on this new routine for awhile, gessoed pages are in the majority. And that means the routine is not only working, but that I need to put more attention into the coloring stages now.
Don't look at me like that, Ricky. ;)
Posted by: Silver | 05/11/2006
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