The blog over at Brown Livres has some excellent photos of books and what has been done in them. Some nice sketching calligraphy practice and drawing head on over and check it out.

As always all art this post is property of the artist.

I was reading an article about work capacity. It’s a physics
concept that I haven’t thought much about since I was in high school but it’s
one of those great concepts that really can apply to so much more than just
physics. The article that I was reading was about working out and being able to
more than the next person when you need to but I was thinking how can I apply
that concept to art, because really it doesn’t matter too much to me if I can’t
relate it to art.

So I got to thinking what can I do to increase my work
(art) capacity. I came up with 4 items to do so. For the next 4 weeks I’m going
to post a new work(art) capacity item.

#3 Organize. Organization takes time to set up
but if you sort through things get it set up and make a change to always put things back where they belong it becomes
second nature. If you always know where your needles, thread and hole punches
are you can save a lot of time by not having to search for them. During busy
times I let my studio go to hell and it’s the worst time for me to do that, but
it usually takes 15 minutes for me to clear everything out and get back to
organization.

These are simple examples of things I do to
increase my work capacity so I can make more books.

Next Week: Use your Tools

One of my all time  favorite bookbinding blogs has got to be Cai Lun’s blog over here. His stuff is fantastic, tight little books that look oh so nice. He also takes fantastic photo’s of his books. I go over there and graze on the book pr0n and get inspired. Head on over and check out his blog read a little and if your inspired to make a book check out his tutorial on "tacket binding" which Keith Smith refers to as a "coiled line binding." Good stuff

I was reading an article about work capacity. It’s a physics
concept that I haven’t thought much about since I was in high school but it’s
one of those great concepts that really can apply to so much more than just
physics. The article that I was reading was about working out and being able to
more than the next person when you need to but I was thinking how can I apply
that concept to art, because really it doesn’t matter too much to me if I can’t
relate it to art.

So I got to thinking what can I do to increase my work (art)
capacity. I came up with 4 items to do so. For the next 4 weeks I’m going to
post a new work(art) capacity item.

#2 Compartmentalize.

Psychology tells us this is bad, factories tell us this is
good and efficient. The main thing to
ask yourself with this section is how can you break your process up? Can you break it into steps? For instance with book biding I cut my paper, fold my paper,
make covers, create spine designs, punch holes and sew. So there are a lot of
places where I can take my process and break it up into pieces and do all of it
at once. For instance, I’m able to cut a lot of paper at once and then fold it
to the number of sheets I need in an evening. The next evening I’ll make
covers. When I work on books I usually have 2 or 3 custom orders going and a
dozen or so getting ready for etsy. I save a lot of time by not pick up between
steps.

These are simple examples of things I do to
increase my work capacity so I can make more books.

Next Week: Organize

Normally when I do custom work I take a lot of pictures of it. Much of my custom work is one of a kind and my most creative. Occasionally I let them slip out of my grasp without photos but I didn’t with the penslip I made for Olivia. I snapped quite  afew pics of it before I sent it on it’s way. So here are some money shots.

I like it when I make people happy I don’t usually get to see the look of happiness in someone’s face when they receive my work. I don’t get to know what they do with my work or how they fill it out. I had someone local who bought one of my journals a thick chunky book in metallic pink. It was great to pass that off to her and see her face, then she brought it in filled with watercolor, ink, pastels and her works and thoughts. It was amazing to handle a large chunk of her life and my work so lovingly used.

Then I make the other things that use up the scraps and my odd moments, things like penslips. They originated as hack on some one else’s idea of a way to keep your pen with your notebook. I took that idea, translated it to leather and eyelets and there you have a penslip. I have several that I use on a regular basis and I’ve tweaked my design to make them better. These are the functional little items that make life easier but I don’t usually get a lot of email or fanfare over, when I do its neat-o!

One of my "regulars" Olivia asked me to custom make her a PenSlip to go with the red Moleskine planner but something not plain. I considered hand distressing some black leather with pewter eyelet- it would look stunning on the red planner, but it wasn’t  very special. It needed to represent Olivia. We’ve worked together several times before and I know she likes earthy tone and colors. So I sat on it waiting for inspiration. I got out my black moleskine wrapped some brown cowhide around it glued it for the time being and primed it. Leather takes acrylic like crazy, acting like raw canvas if not primed. I looked at the colors and items on Olivia’s website and blog. All earth. How could I get that earthiness into the PenSlip?

I looked to the PenSlip again, looked around to my tools. Saw the V-Gouge, thought to carve the leather. Started with a few basic leaf shapes and then incised the vein, rubbed in green to fill in and dye those veins, then headed to the rest of the PenSlip. I thought a deep dark blue would look good against the bright tomato red of the planner. I laid in the blue added a touch of red and let it set. I then hit up around the leaves with some interference paint, making the leaves glow,  it doesn’t show up in the photos or the video as it does in person. I knew that eyelets wouldn’t look good with it so I decided on asymmetrical stitching in red linen.