The Book of drawings. Final thoughts

Now that the book is finished I can look back at it and discus it. I have enjoyed this project and am happy with the overall result. The book isn’t what I expected it to be, I would have liked it to be a lot neater and much better planned. Despite this I think the book has a lot of charm and looks way more interesting and different. I like the fact that the pages are all buckled and warped. 

I think I could have added more leaves into the binding, some of the pages don’t have them because of the way I have sown up the book. I also think this could have been fixed with a bit more attention but I couldn't solve this at the time. Some of the illustrations are not as detailed as others but I think they all work as a set and the colours work well together. Another problem is the pages don't fit in the cover very well. I did cut the paper to fit but the flock I added to the spine made the book slightly miss-shaped. It’s a small problem which I'm not to concerned about but it would have been nice if they had fit. 

I really like how this book turned out. Despite all the imperfections I still think it does a good job of showing pond life in an interesting way.

The Book of Drawings. Final assembly

The final step in making my book is to attach the page block to the cover. I have now made my inlays so this step will be fairly simple. I used pva glue to attach the marbled inlays to the page block. When it was drying I used heavy books to flatten the page. When they were dry I then attached them to the cover using the same technique. After it was dry it provided a solid hold to the book. The only concern I have is that the pages don’t fit in the book case because of the flock I used down the spine. I don’t mind this as it just makes the book look more worn and adds to the effect of being soaked.

The Book of Drawings. Marbling

To attach the back page to the book cover I needed some paper inlays. These are often decorated in most books by using printed patterns or coloured paper. I wanted to colour my inlays by hand using a technique called marbling. Marbling was used in a lot of older books as it’s simple to create and has an interesting effect. I have wanted to do this for a long time and I think it will fit well with the rest of the theme of my book. To make marbled paper I need oil paints, turpentine, foil trays, mixing sticks and cartridge paper.  

The correct way to create marbling is to first fill a try with water. The oil paints need to be diluted to the consistency of ink using the turpentine. The oil is then poured onto the water in the tray and mixed up using a stick. Quickly a piece of paper is placed on the water to pick up the pigment.

I did a practice run but did a few things wrong. I miss understood the process and used linseed oil instead of turpentine. This cased problems because I couldn’t make the oil paints thin enough to float effectively. The second thing I did wrong was to use water colour paper to pick up the pigment. This made the pigment soak into the paper and not sit on it, which was the effect I wanted.

For the second attempt I corrected this mistakes and tried again. I used a limited colour palette of black, blue and green as it fits in with the rest of the book. This time the marbled effect came out a lot better than the first time. I did this twice so that I had a sheet for the back and the front.