And so to Text...Layout, that is.

Having completed the five full-page images (yes, I'm saving two as a surprise), I'm now in a position to lay out the text properly. I should mention that way back last summer, when I was searching for a suitable paper, I did a very rough layout calculation to ascertain the number of pages (and the amount of paper) that I would need. I ordered the paper to be custom-made at Griffin Mill (see Paper Trails) and it is now sitting under my bed, well-matured by now.
          I always make a rough mock-up of the book, starting with the number of pages I think I will need. This book came out to about thirty-six pages (some of which are blank), that is, eighteen leaves. I decided on three sections of twelve pages. This is not the usual layout. I keep the sections fairly small as the binding works better, rather than having a few large (i.e. fat) sections. Making a mock-up shows where adjustments need to be made, I print out the computer layout and images, and stick them into the folded pages, and move them about as necessary. Apart from the text pages, you have to allow for half-title, title page, frontis, business info (ISBN, copyrights, press info, acknowledgements, colophon, limited edition and signature info, table of contents, bibliography - mix and match as applicable).

It is important before designing the book to take into account the number of illustrations and where they will appear in the text, so the book is balanced. It can look odd to have a whole bunch of illustrations in one part of the book and none in another. (Seems obvious, but inevitably you find lots of ideas for certain parts of the text and none for others.)
          I had already decided on the font I would be using, Brioso Pro (see Prince of Fonts),and firstly tried a traditional layout, aligned to the left like a formal poem, with any extra words that wouldn't fit moved to the next line down, with an indent (below, left in the photo). 
I didn't like the look of this, it seemed rather lifeless and uninteresting.

One of the problems with a miniature book is that when you use small font sizes, you lose the beauty of the letterforms and it is difficult to read. The text is after all in 
many books the most important thing about it. Illustrations, paper, binding are there to support the text, so I use a slightly larger size than you might expect, and in this case I'm using 11pt for the body of the text. I then decided to play around with the words, to make them visually more lively and interesting, to match their meaning. Sometimes you can draw attention or contribute to their meaning by the way you arrange them on the page. This includes keeping certain words together, and sometimes emphasizing them by giving them more space, as I have done with this 'siren-song' verse.I laid it out as if I were doing a piece of calligraphy, and for me this works better than the formal arrangement. The photo on the right  also shows again the trial printing I did, using a polymer plate on the handmade paper. So all the image and text files have been sent off to Boxcar Press for processing into photo-polymer plates, and should take about a week to come back to me - Canada Customs permitting. 


And now a treat, a new online exhibition of artists' books, "Canadian Women Artists' Books: The Creative Codex and its variants" from the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Feast your eyes on these gorgeous books!

"Softly whispering their siren-song..."

Silvestri's verse for this next illustration is as follows:
"And as he's dreaming the heavens call him, softly whispering their siren-song: Leonardo, Leonardo vieni á volare!
(Leonardo, Leonardo come fly!)
Silvestri imagines Leonardo being tortured in his dreams by the entreaties of the sirens, to the extent that he decides to make a flying machine and fly.
          I researched 'sirens' and found that the early ones from Greek mythology were malevolent bird-women, portrayed as seducers who lived on an island surrounded by rocks and cliffs. Ships were lured onto the rocks by their enchanting music and singing, and became shipwrecked. They were depicted on statuary and on vases as women with wings, with birds' feet, something like rather dumpy angels. In later stories they became aquatic and mermaid-like. For this work I thought it more appropriate to have them airborne, and made them a little more visually tempting. Wiki tells me that: In his notebooks, Leonardo Da Vinci wrote of the siren, "The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners." Oops! Leonardo is evidently aware of the dangers of flying, as he comments in his notebooks that it would be best to try out a flying machine over water, with inflated wine-skins for safety, in case of wing malfunction. 

  I work on illustrations in what is undoubtedly a very old-fashioned way. I start by making many thumbnail sketches - actually about the size that the finished image will be. Then when I've found something I like, I draw it out on tracing paper twice the size of the finished image, so that when it is resized down the detail and line quality look neater. As the drawing progresses I scan it in and reduce it from time to time to keep track of how it will look in the finished size. Tracing paper erases extremely well and it saves time in repositioning elements of the image if I need to. The tracing is then used to transfer the outlines of the image to a bleed-proof paper, where I work on it in ink with a technical pen and then scan it into Photoshop Elements to erase unwanted 'blips' and generally tidy it up, and finally put it in the right mode and file type for the platemaker. At the top of my wish-list is a Wacom tablet Intuos4, which would probably make my life easier. If anyone out there has used one of these, please tell us about it!
          I recently discovered a good and reasonably priced bleed-proof paper, Pen Sketcher's, made by Bee Paper. I have countless pads of so-called bleed-proof, this is the best paper I've found to date.
          The tracing paper method was advocated years ago by Marie Angel, the very accomplished calligrapher and artist, in her book "Painting for Calligraphers," and I subsequently read that the great illustrator Edmund Dulac used the same working method, but before he died destroyed his tracings as he didn't want people to know that was how he worked.
          Here is a great resource for design and print-making blogs. 

A Sticky Gilding Situation

          Reporting back on the Simple Scribe gold size, this material is indeed very sticky. In fact I think it is the stickiest substance I have ever encountered. It comes in a plastic bottle about three inches high, with a plastic screw cap with a neck opening of about half an inch diameter. I found it quite difficult to get the brush or pen into this without getting size on the side of the handle. As it is so sticky it is hard to wipe off anything it comes into contact with. I then tipped it over, but managed to save most of it, and spent an interesting time trying to wipe it off the formica work surface. It is also very difficult to remove from your fingers.

          I tried it with both brush and pen. You have to use a brush you don't care about, as it is hard to wash out of the bristles. The pen was quite successful, (dark marks are inky residue on the pen nib), and the gold sticks very well to this size. I found it difficult to control with the brush, applying more than I intended. The brush had seen better days and I couldn't get a fine enough point  to apply it exactly as I wanted, even though I was trying for a more casual effect.
          I have a concern with this size that it stays sticky for a very long time (up to six weeks?) and for my project, in a book, it may stick to the opposite page. Once a book leaves my hands I have no control over the conditions in which it exists, it may be in a hot damp climate, in freezing temperatures, under heavy objects.....I left it under a heavy weight for a few days and it seemed OK, and the experiments of about three or four weeks ago seem to have dried off, and are not apparently sticky. But it is an element of risk to consider.
          I may revert to the reversible PVA from Hewit's, that I have used for years, and there is also the shell gold (powdered gold mixed with gelatine) that I haven't yet tried on this paper... So many avenues, just the one pair of legs...
          Here comes another shameless plug, this time for a very accomplished printmaker,
 David Bull, who has spent many years learning and making Japanese woodblock prints (Moku Hanga). I came across his work when searching for another way of editioning coloured prints. (It quickly became obvious that there was no chance I would live long enough to become proficient in this method of printmaking, it is something that takes years to perfect.)
          His latest project is The Mystique of Japanese Prints and he's producing a series of modestly-priced prints that exemplify different techniques, one a month, and a special elegantly designed wooden case that acts as a display easel and storage chest in one. As well as being exceptionally talented he is also very generous with his knowledge and shares his techniques. He has produced a DVD "Your first Print", a step-by-step guide to Moku Hanga, also for a very modest price. Worth checking out if you like artists' original prints and a good way of collecting original modern art. End of plug.
          I've been working on more illustrations and the title page and will show them in another post soon. My feet are paddling away like mad under the surface of the water, although I may not seem to be making much progress.

Releasing Purchased Pigeons.....

            I've been working on the illustrations for "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine". The libretto is very graphic, even cinematographic, every sentence contains many images and yet....my concern is that I don't want it to look like a comic strip, or let it descend into the banal. This choral piece is so dramatic yet sensitively nuanced and I'm trying to strike the right note. So here is my interpretation of "Releasing purchased pigeons one by one into the golden Tuscan sunrise...." This drawing will have a final tweaking and then be made into a polymer plate and printed on one of the coloured Bicchu Torinoko papers as shown in a previous post. 

          My drawing relates to Leonardo's studies and notes on the flight of birds, and Tony Silvestri's interpretation, where Leonardo buys pigeons from the market, and releases them so that he can study and sketch the movement of their wings. It's difficult for us to imagine what a problem that would be for a pre-photography era. We can slow down and study film of birds' flight, but Leonardo had to observe and record in real time. 

          I have to get all the illustrations ready, and the text, before sending to the plate maker, otherwise it becomes very expensive, so I have to be patient. This drawing may have a gilded sun, as per previous experiments. I'm awaiting arrival of the new size from France, to replace the one that got frozen in January and was unusable, and will post the results of experiments with that as and when.  

The Real Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine          For newcomers to this blog, or those who have forgotten what it's about, here's a link to "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine" on Vimeo, performed by the Brigham Young Singers  and made to advertise their concert last year. I love their enthusiasm.  There are lots of other versions on Youtube, the BYU singers is my favourite. 
          Looking through the facsimile pages of Leonardo's notebooks for his early studies of wings, I came across a page fragment with four separate sketches of different types of winged creatures, none of them birds. I reproduce it here, you can see a dragonfly, insect (? moth or fly), flying fish and a bat. 

The pen-strokes are rapid but controlled and sometimes don't quite join up, and he doesn't bother to complete the opposite wings of the fish and the bat, they are taken as read, being the mirror images of the first side. They are notes on his observations, aides memoirs. The dragonfly's legs are haphazardly drawn, but they are of no concern to Leonardo, it is the wings that interest him. 
      I find the sketch of the bat particularly fascinating as to me it reveals Leonardo the man, enjoying his own joke, his old retainer holding out the wing of this enormous bat, the wing being almost the size of his retainer's cloak, the body of the bat being the size of a large lamb. 
      The retainer's expression is one of comical earnestness, he's holding the bat's voluminous wing and the quality of the drawing is such that one can almost feel his grip on it. The hooded cloak is drawn in some detail, almost as though Leonardo couldn't help reproducing the folds of this garment. I love this drawing for its immediacy, skilful execution and its humour, it brings the genius that was Leonardo Da Vinci to life.
      I will use some of his early sketches for the preliminary pages of the book, to lead the reader in to the text of Tony Silvestri's poem. To help set the mood, I decided to colour the paper (Griffen Mill's handmade-see earlier posts) to emulate the pages of the notebook. I stained down a couple of trial pieces, using tea. I made it fairly weak, and applied with a large soft brush to damp paper which was taped to a formica-faced board with masking tape to keep it flat. It took three applications and dryings to get the colour and I made it a little uneven. Of course, it stretches and bubbles up when wet, but dries back flat. You can use a hair-dryer to hasten the drying process. I was quite pleased with the result and will try printing on it when I next have the press inked up. 

The bling goes on

          Detailed below is a further trial using loose gold leaf, and the same reversible PVA. Loose gold has to be handled a little differently from the transfer gold because the slightest air current can disturb it before it has been laid, and waft it into a mangled heap. I show in the photos the tools I use, a gold knife (which is not particularly sharp on purpose), which has quite a broad blade and I sometimes use this to manoeuvre the leaf, along with the gilder's tip. That is the wide brush made (I think) from badger hair that you use to lift the leaf and position on the page. You could also use a piece of stiff paper. 

          The gilder's cushion is one I made way back, and I think I made it from a piece of binder's board and a piece of batting cut to the same size and covered with an oddment of suede leather. You hold the gold book in your left hand, bending back the front cover, and lift out the leaf with your right, and lay it on the cushion, ready to cut into suitably sized pieces. If it folds over on itself, you can often just lift it with the blade and flop it back down gently.
          One of the problems with using a coloured paper is that you can't see where you have painted the PVA, so next time I will add more red watercolour to the mix. They used to use armenian bole, a rust coloured earth pigment, to colour the gesso, but watercolour does just as well, and probably mixes better when you're using PVA.
      

  Briefly, the steps are as follows: paint the PVA where you want the gold to stick. Let it dry. Cut the gold so you have a piece the size of the area to cover. Breathe on the PVA and immediately lift and place the gold in position. Using a piece of thin silicon paper or tracing paper, place this on top of the gold and press onto the PVA with your fingers firmly. Rub gently through the paper, then use a burnisher rubbing gently at first then applying more pressure. Remove the paper and check if it has adhered by gently brushing with a small soft paintbrush. When you are sure it is completely dry you can re-burnish to a high shine. If it is patchy you can try the 'breathing, applying gold' steps again as gold will usually stick to gold. You can also re-size if it still won't stick, but be careful not to apply too much. The moisture from your breath re-activates the PVA. The gold which has not stuck to the PVA will fall away as you brush (I call these 'gold crumbs'). You will be left with a gilt letter or shape. 
        
  I save the gold crumbs for use as 'shell gold', the old name for gold paint made from real gold dust. Do your brushing over a piece of paper which has one edge folded up about two inches, then you can shake the crumbs down to the fold and into a small container. See photo of little jar. Then can be pulverized to a powder and mixed with gelatine. (I use the medical gelatine capsules bought from a pharmacy - heat gently to melt, then mix.) This makes real gold paint, which can be reactivated with water and keeps for a long time. It can also be burnshed when dry but it is never quite the same as the sheer bright look of gold leaf. 
         
Here is the result of the second experiment. The actual size of this print is 55 mm x 70 mm or about 
2 1/8" x 2 3/4" .

Bring on the Bling

          I've always loved the gleam of gold on a page. A gilded initial or a highlight of some kind brings the page to life, the reflection of light gives it a new dimension. Years ago I learned raised gilding using gesso, a mix of plaster of Paris (calcium carbonate) and various adhesives according to recipe. But to use gesso, the substrate you are working on needs to be fairly rigid otherwise the gesso can crack or split off the page. Usually raised gilding is done on vellum or a heavier paper. The weight of paper I'm using for the illustrations for this miniature book is not really rigid enough, so my thoughts turned to flat gilding with PVA. One of my calligraphy tutors from the 1980s, the kindly and talented John Shyvers, wrote an article called 'Gilding with PVA' detailing his experiments with this material, which I have since mislaid. PVA is made to many different specifications depending on the qualities required of it. The type I sometimes use is known as Reversible PVA because it can be soaked back and softened with water if need be, which is not the case with all PVA adhesives. It is a white glue that dries clear. John's article originally appeared with the typo 'Gliding with PVA' which gave us a chuckle at the time, and would probably have sent Leonardo into a flat spin.

 I tried two experiments, one using BS Glaire (the type of shellac-based size used for gilding on leather with hot tools) and the other with the reversible PVA. The BS Glaire didn't work, it soaked into the paper too much, and the gold would not adhere to it when dry. The PVA worked, and here I used two applications, but the surface is not very smooth. Flat gilding and raised gilding are different as the raised kind has a cushiony domed profile and can be made very smooth, so it can be burnished to a high gleam. The flat type has definite possibilities, and I will try some different effects, going with the medium rather than trying to emulate raised gesso gilding. In the following photo I tried flexing the page and creasing across the gilded area, and it stayed put, so I guess it's safe to use for this application.

The gold leaf can be burnished when dry. I used a haematite burnisher, which is shaped rather like a lipstick, with a flat face. For flat gilding this is easier to use than the dog-tooth shaped burnishers you can buy as it doesn't dig in. You could probably use the back of a teaspoon instead, if you don't have a burnisher. The type of gold I use is 23 ct and there are two main types, loose leaf gold and transfer gold. I think both types can be bought in single or double, the double thickness obviously being thicker than the single. For these experiments I used single transfer gold leaf. It is lightly adhered to a thin tissue backing sheet, which makes it easier to handle, you can cut it into pieces with scissors if you want to. Next time I'll try the double loose leaf, and maybe it will be good with one application, perhaps the result will look better. The gilding tools and materials, along with the gold leaf I bought about twenty five years ago so are probably more expensive now. Here is a very good and informative site to learn more about gilding

Above, front cover of gold book, open on right showing sheets of partly used transfer gold. On the right is the haematite burnisher, with its flat smooth face. You have to be careful not to touch this with your fingers as the oils from your skin will prevent it from burnishing properly. I keep it in a bubble wrap sleeve. Some time ago I bought a 'job lot' of burnishers which had obviously had a long and productive life, I show them also. I think they were used for gilding picture frames as the shapes would be good for picture frame mouldings. I don't seem to have the magic touch with pictures as they go where they want, not where I put them.
          Further to the question of gold size, I ordered some from the supplier above but forgot that acrylic polymers are sensitive to freezing. It finally arrived in the first week of January and had been frozen en route, so was completely polymerized into a block reminiscent of a latex sponge. I have decided to wait until the weather is warmer before re-ordering and will report at a later date on this.