The road goes ever on...

For the final project in my printmaking class, we had to make an artist’s book that reflects the previous work we presented in class as well as who we are as artists. I didn’t want to keep beating my poor classmates over the head with intense symbolism and mythology, so I decided to keep it simple and illustrate an excerpt from one of my favorite poems. I also chose to tone it down a bit because we would be trading two of our books with two other classmates, and I wanted it to be something they could relate to and take something away from in the end. (I’ll post pictures of the two books I received soon because they’re really neat!) I also have to say that I hate the entire concept of the artist’s book. I had to make one a few years ago for an assignment, and I didn’t do so well on it. The whole idea of it is so pretentious (even for myself!) and abstract, and it’s more craft-oriented than fine art. Like I mentioned before, art is about communication, and if you can’t successfully portray your idea to your audience, you’ve failed as an artist in my opinion. The only way to make it bearable for myself while fulfilling the project’s requirements was to illustrate a story, so I naturally chose one by my favorite author. Tolkien’s nature and mythological themes in his works also reflect my previous prints this semester. I actually had a lot of fun making it once I found a balance between the book as literature and art, so I hope you guys enjoy it!

I designed it all in Adobe PhotoShop CS3, added a dot print to the image, and printed it on a pronto plate with toner-based ink. For those who don’t know what lithography is, it requires the ink on your plate to have an oily surface. You take a wet sponge and wipe the plate down and immediate roll printing ink over it before the water evaporates (which takes only about five seconds, as I found out the hard way). After you do this several times, wiping with the sponge in between every roll, you run it through a printing press. Unfortunately, you don’t get as much detail with this process as other methods, so my prints aren’t nearly as clear as my digital images. I’m still kind of miffed about this because they would have been if I had increased the contrast, but I’ve never done this before and didn’t have a clue how much detail you could get with this method of printmaking. My printmaking teacher told me my prints would be fine after I sent her a concerned e-mail and they turned out just as I had dreaded. Luckily I don’t think you really need to see all the images perfectly to be able to understand the piece. I’m thinking about making a few more books but with prints directly printed on paper from PhotoShop instead of lithographs. The books were constructed by hand using three pieces of matboard, decorative paper, and a bit of glue mixed with water.

( + 7 original digital images )

( + 7 pictures of the book )