Sunday, November 26, 2017

The World


Here is the progress on the latest spread for Our Home. I've made lots of images of the Earth, partly because I've been making versions of this book for a long time. You can see a bunch of them in this post. And here's the latest!




There is a neat video of me inking this block on Instagram. I can't share videos here, but I've been doing a lot over there. If you are on Instagram, say hello!


It's printed but not painted yet. I'm planning to paint it tomorrow. You can go over to my other blog, Our Home to see how it turns out and looks with color!

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Bookmaking at Mountain Village Montessori


My daughter goes to preschool at Mountain Village Montessori Charter School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and I've gotten to do some fun projects with the preschool and kindergarteners there. This year, they added Enrichment Programs that happen once a week for the 1st through 6th graders. I volunteered to teach bookmaking and it was such a great adventure! I had 2 classes once a week for 45 minutes each, and the session was 9 weeks long. One class had the younger children and the other class had the older children.


Over the 9 weeks, we made 4 different styles of books. In the photo above, they are holding up the first books which had hard mat board covers bound to the pages with screw posts.


Then we did a sewn book with colored paper covers. Above was a beautiful moment when a whole table of boys were concentrating on their books.


Before doing artwork in these books, I explained about using a storyboard to plan the pages and then transfer your ideas into the finished book. Only a few students really took advantage of their storyboards, including the awesome job going on in the photo above. This young lady created a non-fiction book about asteroids and used her storyboard to get her book done just the way she planned it!


These two amazing comic artists above were less interested in bookbinding, but complete naturals at filling up their books with dense storytelling, comics, and Minecraft narratives.


Next we created accordion books and used fun papers to make collaged covers.


Each book turned out so differently! I loved to see when someone got really involved with their book and spent time making it just right.


 Our last one was a watercolor book bound with ribbon. So much fun!


These girls really enjoyed the watercolor and definitely could have used one more day to put the finishing touches on their books. Hopefully anything not quite done can be finished at home!


Group photo of some fantastic bookmakers! I'm so glad I got to teach these classes. I think there are definitely some students in these photos that will be making art, writing, storytelling, and even making books as an important part of their lives. Yay for books!