Monday, January 18, 2010

Abaca Paper Coptic Book, Photograms, and David Bowie

Hello everyone!
Yeah, I know it's been awhile...this is due, unfortunately, to the sad demise of my trusty digital camera. But never fear! Although I am still devoid of my camera's sweet, metallic embrace, I will post nonetheless. Here's a little coptic book I made before Christmas with samples of all of the handmade abaca paper I'd been making:

Image hosting by IMGBoot.com

Image hosting by IMGBoot.com

Image hosting by IMGBoot.com

It's amazing to think that all of the paper in that book is made from the exact same fibers; the pages near the end have just been beaten a lot longer. Aaaanyway, last Friday, I made photograms for the first time! A photogram is when you take a sheet of photo paper and expose it with objects sitting on top of it. The light shines through certain items and it's blocked out by others, and it makes quite an interesting effect. Here's the one I made:

Image hosting by IMGBoot.com

You can also take a piece of photo paper, place a finished photogram on top of it upside down, and create an inverted image, like this:

Image hosting by IMGBoot.com

In the "what mediums are next to try" front, I'm soon going to start doing 35mm photography! Hurray! I'm also finally attempting to learn photoshop, that most elusive of beasts. I've just started, but here's a picture that I think accurately shows my progress; I made it using a scanned drawing, old scanned money from Honduras, and pictures of David Bowie from google:

Image hosting by IMGBoot.com

If that doesn't show progress, I don't know what does.

3 comments:

  1. Everything looks so cool! I loved making photograms during summer camp, yours remind me of Edward Scissorhands for some reason. What did you use to make it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Maria! I used this Swiss-army hammer tool kind of thing; it's a hammer with foldout pliers, knife, etc. I also used needles, a cord that I use to hook up my projector, and a drawing that I did on mylar (that's the bizarre ghostly looking stuff!) Then, for the little hand, the zombie hand necklace from this post!

    http://characterzoo.blogspot.com/2009/02/jewelry-and-bowie.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love your book with tabs. Do you sell those? Would like to buy one! Thanks Amy Baldwin

    ReplyDelete