Kilian Capitals

 I have long loved the look of this lettering style, and before we came away I discovered a short online course about them. So, I signed up and during our first week here have managed to sit down and watch the lessons and do a bit of practice. Such fun!

The view from my 'studio' desk.

I did lots of practice of individual letter from groups and letters.  It is funny how after years of writing, your hand wants to do certain things when forming a letter, and yet this style forces you to do different signs and go in different directions. I had to catch myself quite a bit and slow down and focus on doing what felt a bit unnatural.

One of the things I like most is how he knits and weaves letters; and allows them to cross over into other letters alongside, above and below.

Lots of notes to self!

I then began practising layouts for a phrase Peace is Every Step. For the life of me, I couldn't remember to not make the second bowl of the S equal to the first one - it should stop well before, making the letter quite top heavy.

The advice is to do the layout in pencil first, to work out your ligatures and spacing and placement; and then go on to do the proper lettering. I think in time you could probably commit in one fell swoop - but in these early days it is good to have the opportunity to rub out and try again as the planning of the letter placement takes a bit.

I think I like the last one best - where I have made EVERY a bit bigger, but need to move the E to the left to balance things out a bit.

And then I distracted myself with this pile of scraps I found I had left here last time.

Clearly they had bookmarks written all over them! Just waiting for me to transform them.

So I had a play around which gave me inordinate pleasure, and made four bookmarks!

I will get back to some more quotes and layouts and practice, but this was fun to do.

More printing and proofing

 My book of silences continues to take small steps forward, and to date no major dramas, just the odd problem to solve and sort.

Whilst waiting for some ink to dry, I got the 18pt Univers out and got the title ready - although this is not the layout of the title page, I have it out, ready to go when the chase is finally free from the 16 silences that are making up the first book.

At the moment, the plan is for an edition of 21, so I am printing 25 just in case...

These great little drying racks also offer some wonderful paper moments!

As I have previously mentioned, there is a fair bit of imposition and alignment to get right. I was trying to check whether the silence on the front and the back of the page had printed at about the same height, and thought - oh its such a great sunshiny day I am sure I'll be able to check out there, And I did.

I am happy here that the top lines on each sides line up.

And here I was hoping that the where I had to print on both sides would broadly line up as well, which I think it has.

And just what a great sky it was. So good for soul to feel warm again and to enjoy the bright light that is Australia in Spring and Summer.

And it is definitely doing magical things with my Dad's orchids as well!

Paper selections and decisions

 As I continue along my merry way with preparing this small book; the next step was the cover selection. I had bought this beautiful grey Magnani paper recently (when I was culling all my other papers) because I had planned to use it here. When I discovered a scrap of other paper I had left over from putting together the paper sample book, I wondered if that might work better. The planned grey was cool; and 300gsm. 

The opportunistic grey was warm, and 250gsm. Here they are with the Magnani Map paper between them - warm at the top, and cool at the bottom. I cut mock up covers of both of them and came down on the side of the warm grey, mostly because it just folded and felt better.

And so I cut 50 covers...there will hopefully be two books, each in an edition of 21, with a couple of spares ready in case I muck things up along the way.

There are so many preparations to making a book in an edition like this, and whilst I had done this for the first book, I now needed to do a type count for the second book. Just to make sure once again, that I would have enough type, of the typeface I wanted to use, to print all the words I had to print.

This isn't an issue when you are using the computer. There you have a never ending supply of every letter. When using traditional letterpress techniques however, one really is limited to the number of the letters you have in your tray. So if a quote needs 10 lower case es for example, I need to know I have 10, not nine; otherwise I can't print the full quote.

It is a time-consuming and mind- numbing process, but again if you don't do it, then you get halfway through the printing and have to change direction in a hurry.

I don't mind random moments if that is part of the design of the thing; but when you are going for consistency and accuracy and exact reflections of the words of others, then I really need to know I can make all the words.

So here we are...counting each letter off.

And yet after such a large amount of eye-tiring, inside work, there are flowers...

Papers and ironing and orchids

 The good (great!) news through the week was that I  submitted my presentation for the Bind25 Conference in New Zealand. That felt like such a relief and such milestone.

The fact that it was there, always there, waiting for me to tweak it, add to it, delete elements of it, was the strangest of feelings for the past few weeks. But now it is done. Yay.

So I decided to turn my mind to a wee book I am thinking of making in an edition.  To start with I had to work out what papers did I think would be best; and then discover if I had enough of the paper to do what I wanted...

These are my lightest book papers - from my paper sampler book - and I was looking for the whitest, and the smoothest, and luckily for me they were the same paper. Magnani Map paper, 140gsm.

I then looked through my light papers drawer, with Japanese papers and other feather light papers and came across this great piece. We had a sunshiny day so I popped it outside to apricate - gather the sun's rays - and freshen it up a bit.

Which really drew attention to the creases! I need to cut around 50 small sheets out of this piece, so I knew I was going to need pretty much all of it. Next step - google "can you iron tissue paper?" and with my newly found knowledge that yes you can, if you protect it with other paper (which was common sense really, but I do like to check).

And so I did, portion by portion.

And this is the after shot. It worked really well and I realised that once I have cut the sheet down further, I will be able to iron the individual pages as well before using them in the book.

It is going to be a small book - about A7 when stitched, so kind of nice to hold; but will require lots and lots of cutting of papers.

And I thought it really was worth sharing my beautiful ironing board cover design! By Suzie Hope, handmade in Dubbo. I makes ironing a much nicer event.

Which is the perfect segue to some of Dad's orchids shining in the early morning sun...

Type books re-made

 Re-organising continues apace here and the paper inventory and the type inventory are both now complete.

I have documents in the computer and printed out of where things can be found; and I have re-made the books that acts as samples and guides. Very chuffed.

I hd noted a few papers I was missing samples of, so it was time to find them and cut them and pop them in the books.

And there they are, happily ensconced in the right place in the two copies of the book I made - one for B and one for me. The paper sample books are simply sequenced by paper weight, starting with 100gsm and ending with 300gsm samples.

And so it was time to move onto the type. We already had several type sample books, but given we have reduced our holdings significantly it was time to make sure the books reflected those we had.

I have made the type books in three ways; alphabetically; by size; and by style. I figure that these three approaches allow to find a typeface I want to use depending on what I need up front - does it have to be small? Am I looking for fancy? Am I wondering what size I have Colonna in?

Alphabetically we start with Announce Grotesque. I often think I should investigate what it is in the type world that grotesque refers to? In general terms it's not a word that describes something lovely; yet with type they aren't ugly typefaces so I am left wondering. One day I shall investigate.

And then by size - sometime you want to make a statement so you only want to look for large typeface sizes. Or sometimes you are printing a book and need to select only from your smallest type. So this makes that part easier.

And then I often items thinkI want to use a sans serif font or a fancy one for a statement of sorts and it's easy to go in this way.

Always satisfying to be able to find what you might want, amongst what you might have.

 

And here's a document that I leave on top of the drawers to grab and look at where I will actually find the the in the type cabinets.

And the prepping and brain space organising goes on as well... now we have pink post it notes too!

All of it alongside one of those sunsets you wouldn't believe was real if somebody painted it because of those rays of light...

And late afternoon sun on a port wine magnolia..

Teaching and Presenting

 I am excited to be presenting at a Conference in NZ in September - "Bind25". Hosted by ABCNZ it brings together fine binders and artists book makers and all associated variations in between.  Whilst they have prepared an extensive week-long program I will only be dashing over for a long weekend kind of thing...life.

I am presenting on my work and thinking about how to build narrative in artists' books. The presentation is coming along and taking shape as I ponder and meander and crystallise and clarify.

Before I head off I have also been offered the opportunity to run a workshop on Building Narrative - an opportunity for folk to take their artists' book making deeper; to think their way through story telling via the medium of artists' books and to take the reader on a full and satisfying journey.

Through the week I knuckled down and grabbed hold of a heap of artists' books from my collection to start finessing and updating the course.

I brought them home and spread them out.

And sorted through the opportunity moments in the workshop where participants will sit down together and discuss what different stories different styles of artists' book tell...

And I reached a point where I knew which books would work with which books, and in which groupings and why.

Sometimes I joke that there might be two things written on my gravestone:

1. She had neat handwriting; and 

2. She was organised.

The organised thing is always a bit amusing as I am the only person who ever really experiences my head space. My head is filled with thoughts that need connecting or jotting down; or which create new jumping off points for other ideas and... it can be quite the jumble. My sense has always been that my organisational side is just about trying to make sense of all this bubbling excitement!

And so as I kept having a multitude of thoughts and ideas about where to take the workshop and presentation next; I decided each thought could go on a sticky note and get stuck down. That way I wouldn't lose it, and I could watch them all come together.

It got pretty wild by the end of the morning!

Yet the sense of satisfaction as enormous. Despite how it might look here, I knew where to head next, and what needed doing. So good!

And then just to some lovely colourful, jewel-like details of an artwork we recently purchased from our friend Ken Munsie. These delightful moments make me smile each time I pass by, or glimpse over at it...