Finished Artist Book

Artist Statement

This artist book was a way for me to combine two of my artistic passions together, photography and drawing.

The book revolves around four of my cousins. Out of everybody in my family I chose these two pairs of siblings, Ben & Becca and Maddy & Holly, because they are both each represent a different stage of my childhood. Each drawing represents an aspect of their personalities, a memory I associate with them and/or a passion of theirs.

Ben & Becca are the oldest of the four. Many of the drawings they inspired come from personal experiences I’ve had with them, living 500 meters up the road we basically lived at the others house after school and on weekends. These experiences range from when we were little to things they’re doing now.

Maddy & Holly are the younger of the two. Being the babies of the family, many of their drawings are inspired by their personalities, things they’d like to do and what I picture them doing in the future.

Many of the drawings also represent me and how my drawing has evolved.

 The title of my book, Drawn Together, comes from the cartoon, Drawn Together, which essentially is Big Brother for cartoons. This inspired my book title because like any family both theses two sets of siblings have given me many endless hours of entrainment. The title also fits well with my book because I have literally drawn on the pages, in a cartoon style, and brought them together.

To get a quality end product I had to come up with an idea that would allow the photographs and the drawings to easily stand apart from one another but allow then to mix seamlessly. The photo frames allowed me to use a select area in each photograph to draw in or around and provided my subjects with something to interact with, which also brought out aspects of their personalities which inspired my drawings.

I choose to print my photographs in black and white and draw in black to make the two media’s mix better and have an overall graphic feel. The layout of my book has also been kept simple so it doesn’t subtract from the work and helps fuel the graphic theme within it.

Overall I believe I have created something unique, a mixture of photography and drawing, that is inspired by and biased on members of my family.  

So this is my first finished page, I've made it so I have photos where I have drawn inside the frame and left the outside intact and the other way around as well.

For my layout I like the A4 pages in the previous post (the portrait orientated ones), then I have the others which is the A3 tiny images and this above one. I think with the placement of my images on the A3 canvas I can easily cut them down to A4 or I can redo my A4 layouts to suit A3 landscape format. This is one of the things I'm having trouble deciding.

If I print A4 = 10 pages including the cover

If I print A3 = 6-7

I really like the idea about leaving the pages loose.

Artist book Pictures and Layout

So my idea has been inspired by my family and my I drawings. The use of the photo frame is a tool I've used to separate my drawings from the subjects. I've make two types of drawings from this, the frame as a window to another world and the frame as a tool for the subjects to enter another world.

I'm having trouble thinking of ways to print and bind my book. At this stage I've decided to print on matt because I want to avoid the marker turning weird colours like brown and purple that I've noticed come out on gloss. I've printed on a A1 size poster but the marker ink isn't taking to the paper the way I want it to. I'm now printing on A3 from a sketch pad on a home printer. I've also experimented with printing on lined exercise paper an I really like this look as well. 

So I'm a little stuck with how to put this  together, I was thinking a hand made pocket folder where all the pages sit loose. This would end up looking like a collection of bits and pieces.

Picture wise, my images are black and white with strong contrast. I decided to make then this way so they would look a little more graphic and complement my images better.  

Photos

Images and Progress

Sorry I haven't had a chance to upload these, I've been trying to do a photo a day but it'a working out better for me to just take my camera out one day a week and look for things I find interesting. I really like the idea of working just with my 50mm because not only is it light an a little more discreet I'm really enjoying the depth of field I can get with it.

I'm finding myself looking at textures and little hidden moments. I'm also liking turning things to black and white and being able to completely change the look of a photo or bring out things that couldn't be seen before, I'm also experimenting with turning things to HDR and then converting them to black and white. At the same time I feel not all of my image benefit from being turned to black and white.

I really like the colour and simplicity of this image and even though it is so simple I think it does a good job at evoking a warm and peaceful feeling.

This was just for fun, basically just experimenting with some Photoshop, HDR and warming filters.

Idea

I'm not sure what my idea/theme will be at this stage I'm purely taking a photo a week and am interested if I can make a connection between them or if I start to pick things unknowingly that match. Other than that I have a couple of road trips coming up and think that the idea of exploring that could be fun.

Jeff Wall

Why I was a little confused with this reading the main points I took from it were:

http://chicago.apartmenttherapy.com/images/uploads/7-3-07ATjeffwall2.jpg

1) The photograph it's self was completely staged. This surprised me because it is such a mundane scene that would of been so easy to find already whole but he chose to create it. I think letting the models choose all the furniture and letting them choose what they were wearing went a long way in creating a believable environment for these people.

2) The world within a world aspect of the photo. This idea intrigued me especially because the photo appears so honest. The placement of this modest lifestyle against the view of the world outside makes me associate it with entertainment, like you can imagine these people sitting and watching others through this window, much like how we view them through the camera lens.

3) From what I understand he's trying to move away and comment on the typical 'staged' scene you'd see from someone like Annie Leibovitz, but his work seems to be based on the same basic idea just with out all the glamour .

Overall while I think I know what he's trying to do, putting the picture and article together, it just doesn't feel as refined as it could for me, it feels more like an experiment or human study on what happens when you give people something then put them in a room together, then an attempt at taking a great photo.

Photo 1

Lesson 1 Artist Books

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/wp-content/uploads/Deirdre/Artists_Books_049.jpg

Reflection

-I found it interesting that artist books can be made of other materials like glass, led and bronze and have nothing to do with printed media.

-It's a living and changing practice.

-Paper can be collected, fixed and bound in many ways but an artist book is a sign and object that a reflection of their culture.

-Different layouts.

-The practice took off in the 1960's.

-Avant garde (advanced grade) and livre de peintre (book artist) refer to high quality, luxury art books. Moscow and Pairs lead the was in contemporary book design.

-While it is hard to define what exactly an 'artist book' is because they can be so different, after some further research I came away thinking that they're a an extension of the artist, how they view the world and how they believe their art and beliefs fit into it. All carefully crafted into one neat package these books can be one off unique, hand made books or can reflect mass production and commercial methods and properties.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/wp-content/uploads/Deirdre/Artists_Books_032.jpg

My Idea

For my book I think I'd like to concentrate on my own story. This book would be a documentary piece, roughly twelve black and white images in length, and would focus on a picture of objects next to a scene, or a part of a scene. I would like to give the viewer two halves of to a picture and have the visualize the outcome. I was thinking some kind of mix media presentation could be fun but I'm not sure yet. The images below are examples of the scene and an object.

http://www.redcharming.com/images/feltey-weaving.jpg

http://www.redcharming.com/images/fanny-the-floorloom.jpg