Artist Book
A booklet inspired by what home means to me. Home is wherever my family is. When I had my son I felt like I became a new person. Wherever my son and I decide to go, as long as we are together, that is where I can call home.
Mock Ups
The first step to create an artist book is to first create multiple book mockups. This helped me to visualize the kind of artist book I would want to create. I knew that I wanted to try creating an accordion book. That is partly due to the two books that I got to look at during the Special Collections Visit at the Parks Library, Iowa State University.
As I looked through the multiple possibles of art books, I saw one called the Accordion Book With Flower-Fold Pages. As you can see in these images I created four flower-fold pages. These pages are glued onto the accordion book.
Concept and Sketches
Home for me has always been about my family. Yes, the physical house gives me that feeling of comfort and respite, but what makes home a home, is the people in it.
When Anthony came into my life, it changed me completely. I felt as though I was reborn as a person. What I thought was important, didn’t seem so important anymore.
He is my world. He is my home. The place I feel most loved and the most safe.
Triptych paintings, especially religious ones. My second thought was how a Catholic Church altar positions Christ at the middle on the cross, with two other religious figures on either side of the altar.
Illustrations
Once I had some sketches completed, I moved onto Procreate to begin my illustrations. I first traced an image of the wallpaper pattern that is located inside my house. I chose that image because its the first pattern that I see when I get home.
The second pattern below, is that found in a Catholic church. Heavy patterns with religious symbols envelopes artworks as well as the walls of churches.
Printing
Digital, Risograph, Screen Printing
My prints consist of screen printing, digital, and riso. The 5 prints on the top row, were done with riso printing with black ink. That is the pattern found in my house.
In the bottom row, the 2 black ink patterns were done by screen printing. The pattern resembles that from a catholic church. The colored images, are digital prints, made up of red, yellow and green.
Covers
For the front cover and back cover of my artist book I chose to do use polymer clay as my medium. My reason to do so was because I wanted the cover to resemble old mideval bibles.
The bibles are large, gold and covered with jewels. I reused the flower element from my illustrations and used it as the focus for my cover. The process took a few days becuase I had to sculpt the covers, let them dry and then paint multiple layers.
After the clay dried I painted my first layer that consisted of the colors brown and red mixed together. The next layer was gold metalic paint.
