I keep thinking I will be done with this edition in a few days. Then a few days more, then a few days more. It’s taking me a lot longer than I thought. I thought it was a pretty simple book, but maybe it’s not. And unfortunately, I also have to fit the rest of my life into everything else I do too. Truthfully, I don’t even know what that entails half the time.
Anyway, it seems that the day I was painting these two simple shapes (the circle and the Hebrew letter “tet”), I’d be booking right along. (No pun intended.) But it took me ages just to set the table up to organize a painting space, then break it all down. Once everything was dry, I suppose I got meticulous with the circle drawings because I took a very sharpened color pencil and outlined the circles both on the insides and the outsides. Now they look really cool, like they are glowing or something. They remind me of how some of the girls in elementary school used to color.
Then I embellished each “tet” differently. Not one is the same. They’re all a little whimsical.
Pictured above is also the back of one of the antique paper labels and I think for those I’ve made the decision to make the Hebrew word, light. I’m not sure what I’m doing on the other label because the ink shows through on those. I’ll have to use pencil.
It seems I’m definitely making some progress though, right? Everything cleans up so nicely the more these steps get completed, which I love. It means I can soon bring a canvas in the house and start painting.
They just need to be bound and trimmed, labeled and tied up. Then there it is. This is what they will look like all finished in the box:
I finally decided on a binding. Woo hoo. And I’m thinking white may be better than the purple against the black covers. I’ll experiment. I’m going for a stringy long stitch, singed in the middle with a spot of color instead of a boring bow. Something a bit like this:
Other than that, I’ve been working on some semblance of a new page for The Spark for when it’s all finished. Still, I’m taking pre-orders until I can figure out what I’m really going to charge. More of course. I will probably send a few to Vamp & Tramp, my official Artist’s book sellers, and get their opinion on price.
And by the way, speaking of Vamp & Tramp, I just learned that they placed 1-SELF into the Los Angeles Public Library’s Special Collections. Growing up, the LA’s public libraries held a very special place in my heart and in my life. I discovered many writers there, like Charles Bukowski. I also pretty much learned to read there – properly anyway.
Well, back to work.