Spring ~ Page 8 :: Altered Book :: As the Earth Turns

Text:

It was a great day
when the wild geese came back.
No more winter; no more frozen water,
shovelling snow, frostbitten toes, blocked roads, croup, colds,
or hot beach rocks in the beds.
Early spring sunshine lay pale and thin all along the edges
of the ploughed piece.
It was restful walking by herself through the morning grass
her footsteps on the path the only sound
except the frogs singing in the marsh
and the whippoorwill in the lilac bush.
The branches of the tree by the well were bare
but restless, as if life quickened in them.
But the plum trees by the fence were in full bloom
and the Strawberries had blossomed.
Wild geese had brought the SPRING.

Ingredients:

magenta F&W acrylic ink, magazine clippings, puzzle pieces, Perfect Paper Adhesive-Gloss by USArtquest, Lineco PVA glue, gel pens, Krylon gold pen, Sennilier oil pastels, acrylic medium

Lessons Learned:

1) When doing a transfer, be sure to consider the interplay of colors on the transfer and the page
2) Also, make sure both papers are completely covered with medium. Do two coats if necessary.

Process:

Well, this page was quite an adventure with plenty of twists and turns along the way! Here's how it went: I painted my double page spread with magenta inks. I had a really lovely magazine picture of a spring meadow filled with pink and yellow flowers. I was going to cut the meadow into strips and lay them across the page and then put the text between the meadow slices. I still like that design idea and will probably try it on another page in the book.

Wait . . . I just remembered . . . even before that my intention was to take this text that I had cut and rearranged and to curve it around the leaves of the previous page. I had actually glued down about twelve words, but I didn't like the way it looked, so I scraped the word pieces up and decided to use them on this page instead.

Okay . . . where was I? Oh yes, somewhere along the way, I decided to do an image transfer of my meadow magazine picture onto the page. I wanted to use a technique I had learned in a workshop by Jonathan Talbot this summer. I painted fluid gloss medium over the book pages and let them dry. I did the same thing with the magazine pages. Then I laid the magazine pages face down on top of the book pages, covered them with release paper, and used a small tacking iron to adhere them to each other. I took a small pot of water and a cloth and slowly removed the magazine paper until only the image remained. And what a shock that was!

I had lost all my color sense. What happened was the yellow flowers on the pink ink became orange, and the green grasses on the pink ink became black. It was amazing, and not at all what I imagined. I showed it to every member of my family. "I can't decide if I love this or hate it," I said. "What do you think?" The youngest boy (11) mulled it over and said, "I hate it, Mom. I think you should tear it out." Talk about brutal honesty! Next I asked my biggest boy (my husband). He looked it over at arm's length and up close. "What is it supposed to be?" he wondered. "I'm not sure anymore," I answered. "It's okay," he said. "Don't tear it out." Evenly divided. My middle boy (17) wasn't home yet. I went back into my work room to stew. About an hour later, in saunters the adolescent, walks straight to the book (how did he know?) picks it up and declares, "That's cool." That was the tie-breaker, and I was relieved because it was starting to grow on me. Sort of.

As you can see, I continued to futz with it. I took some other flower clippings, crinkled them up and washed them under water. I glued them on the right side with matte medium. I took oil pastels and tried to highlight the edges of the flowers and rubbed it in, so they almost look like they're glowing. I laid the text across the page, and then used a gel pen to draw in some of the pink and orange since the white text seemed too stark. I found some puzzle pieces and used the Krylon pen to color the edges and PVA to glue them to the page. I covered the whole thing with PPA so that the pages wouldn't stick together. And then I declared this page officially over and done! Finally . . . I think . . .

Reflections:

I think I've said it all.

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