It has been a while since my last…confession …eu…! I mean posting and I have to confess to much learning in these last few months. Aside from the very heavy learning of a doctoral seminar ( I’ll say more at a later time) my creative learning focused on bookbinding this winter.
Bookbinding and the book arts are a fascinating multifaceted field with traditional and contemporary approaches and many more artistic takes on the subject such as the altered books I spoke about in earlier postings.
I learned the very basic techniques. These simple techniques can be used in my art therapy sessions to make journals and assemble series of paper artworks. They are fun and the children and teens feel a sense of accomplishment when they see that they can make their own journals in and outside the therapy room. And of course they serve as containers for their thoughts, words and pictures.
I learned how to make a 3 hole pamphlet. Very easy with basic materials. A visual tutorial is found here.
And a more complex and creative version that is basically a series of pamphlet held together by what is called longstitch binding. Longstitch can be simple but quite creative as the stitching is criss-crossed and combined to make patterns. The cover is also another aspect that can offer many different ways of working cutting out windows to expose part of the spine or playing with the stitches that weave in and out of the cover. Beautiful Japanese papers can be combined and used in various ways, or you can invent your own using recycled materials. These are my first attempts above. I used Japanese papers from Au papier Japonais. I learned from Fran Sendbuehler who is a professional bookbinder and a very patient teacher. I highly recommend her workshops.
You will find easy tutorials adapted to children here (pdf documents with diagrams ready to download), wonderful illustrated ideas for using recycled materials in bookbinding here, and a wealth of resources on the subject here, if you plan on being serious about the subject.
Classé dans bookbinding, Books, Fran Sendbuehler, Leveck, longstitch binding, paper artworks, recycling.
Catégorisé dans Arts.
Publié le 21 avr 2010
