ʚmy favorite bookɞ

One of my favorite books of all time would be “She Just Wants to Forget” by r.h. Sin. It’s a poetry book that speaks volumes on the journey of a woman trying to forget someone she once loved. It’s an emotional read and is written so beautifully, for a while I was surprised that a man could write that well from a women’s perspective of love and heartbreak. To me, the book isn’t sad at all, it’s rather eye-opening to see how I may or may not relate to some of the poems. Every time, I try to read a new poem and savor the meaning of the words and try to capture the emotions his versus envoke.

Thinking About Books

There’s a lot to think of when considering books. You can think about literature, cover design, pop-up books, artist books, sketchbooks, and more.

One of my favorite pieces of literature is V.E. Schwab’s Vicious, a fantasy fiction novel that’s about two college students, Victor and Eli, who discover how to give themselves superhuman abilities. Chaos unfolds as a result and the two friends become arch enemies. I love Victor and Eli’s dynamic and relationship, the idea of ExtraOrdinaries and their powers, and the supporting characters that include two sisters, a hacker, and a dog. I added the designs of the front covers of both Vicious and its sequel, Vengeful.

Leigh, Tasha. “Review: ‘Vicious’ and ‘Vengeful’ by VE Schwab.” The Nerd Daily, The Nerd Daily, 30 Jan. 2019, www.thenerddaily.com/vicious-vengeful-ve-schwab/.

Sometimes, I think about the pop-up architecture book my dad has. The pages would act as a base for large towers and intricate foldable models. As a kid, I was intrigued and careful towards the models. There is a lot of thought and design that goes into these pop-up books and I was always curious about how they were created and printed.

And recently, I’d seen different types of artist books that tell a story through words, visuals, and models while still being able to be folded up into a book.  This form of book interests me the most as there is so much creativity that goes into them. It also breaks the boundaries of what a book is perceived as. Out of all of the forms of books, I’m most curious about artist books.

I’m excited to explore bookmaking as it’s something that interests me. I see videos of people bookbinding books with hundreds of pages or people even making their own recycled paper and I like to admire the process.

The Evolution of Books

This week in class we talked about how books can be made and we investigated ways to make our own books. I’ve always enjoyed reading, but I didn’t know a lot about the history of books. Here’s this weeks investigation about how books have developed over time:

Some of the first documented ‘books’ were on scrolls of papyrus from the 4th millennium BCE. These included one long sheet of paper rolled around two rods.

The next major development in the history of books were the codices found in Roman societies in the 1st century CE. These were more similar to our modern day books as they consist of paper folded and woven together. These began to be used to spread Christianity as they were more mobile.

The first know printed book, the Diamond Sutra, is from around the 5th century CE.

Even later in 1439 CE, Gutenberg created a mechanical device to easily print books.

Now, this process has become much easier and allowed for books to be created faster and spread around the world. I wonder how the design of books will develop because even though we have seen more digital books, I don’t think we are getting rid of paper books anytime soon. Maybe they’ll be a new design that still allows readers to flip through physical pages, but uses less resources.

Thanks for learning about the history of books with me!

References:

“A Brief History of Books.” Google Arts & Culture, artsandculture.google.com/story/a-brief-history-of-books/OAXR-SPrQmOCew?hl=en. Accessed 20 Feb. 2021.

“The Long Strange Story of Search: From Ancient Scrolls to Digital Books.” MagellanTV, www.magellantv.com/articles/the-long-strange-story-of-search-from-ancient-scrolls-to-digital-books. Accessed 20 Feb. 2021.

Books

While books can come in many different shapes and forms, I have a particular fascination with books of a small size. More specifically, teeny tiny books! I’ve always been amazed by miniatures and dioramas because of the amount of detail in something so small. Miniatures that can function the same as their normal-sized counterparts however, are something else.

This is a tiny photo album created by Social Print Studio. Despite its small size, the detail visible on the photographs is incredible. The tiny book is also shaped like a traditional photo album!

Small books also have a practical function! Pocket bibles have been around for a while and their smaller size makes them easier to transport than bulkier books.

Books

Yesterday in class we looked at various types of books and their styles. I looked at books that were folded, binded, and had many more corky styles to them with pop up pages and various types of book markers. After viewing the books we made our own version of two books using similar styles by folding paper in a certain way. One of the books we made seemed like it could be a brochure for a country or vacation spot that is tiny and compact, yet when you open it, it has tons of information on all the pages. I have never seen books like this and it peaked my interest in the design aspect. I do not like to read books that often unless they pertain to something that I am trying to learn. My favorite book of all time has to be The Great Gatsby. I read this book for my English class in high school and immediately fell in love with it. The plot and story behind it kept me intrigued the entire time. Its crazy to think that we learn a lot about Gatsby from Nick, yet there is a lot that we still do not understand. There are many cliff hangers at the end of novel which makes me want a sequel, but unfortunately Gatsby is dead. Overall, I love the story behind a rich man and his secrecy because I would love to live the life style of Gatsby.

Phillips, Brian, et al. “The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Amazon, Spark Pub., 2002, www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567.

3D Construction

I would like to focus on and research work with shadows and photos to best encapture shape and perspective. I believe a bigger figure would allow me to work with a shape more and lead to less crowding and more space for light to go through the object.

3D sculpture

This project was challenging because I had a hard time transforming the paper into a three dimensional medium. I started off with cutting shapes that resembled my drawing and then moved to creating four quadrants that represented the quadrants in my drawing.  

3D Representation Project

Out of my three drawings, I decided to make a 3D representation of the following:

I had the idea of suspending layers of paper to mimic the topography of the drawing, but I decided on using cardboard and poster board to eliminate negative space and add much more volume to the model. The most time-consuming part was cutting all of the pieces. There are five different tiers and each tier had a different circumference. Additionally, to add height, I cut out at least two layers for each tier. On each layer, I cut out another circle that would act as the hole in the drawing, and to make the hole feel infinite, I cut the base of the model as well. For the radiating background, I cut out strips of the poster board and glued them to some guidelines I previously drew.

When I was layering the white posterboard on top of the cardboard to unify the rest of the model, I was thinking of wrapping each tier with white paper as well. However, I decided against this when the pattern of the cardboard actually added to the composition even though there was brown interrupting the complete white of the rest of the model. What I did change was that I added another layer of strips to the radiating background to make the rays thicker as well as bring more attention to the background as it was a little lacking. I’m not sure if it was effective, but it thickened the rays anyways.

I wanted to take nice pictures of the model, but my lamp had been flickering for the past few days. Instead, I used the light over my sink and a clip-on ring light to make sure the model was well lit. I also used extra poster board as an all-white background. I wanted to especially capture the depth of the hole as well as different angles of the tiers. Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how the 3D representation turned out and enjoyed the process of making it.

My Art in 2D & 3D

Trying many ways, I decided to build a long tunnel with square shape. Because square is main shape in my picture. It shows the depth and the point to look into the end of the tunnel. The picture below show is how different the point we look in to my 3D

This picture  of my 3D art above show how looks like with my  2D drawing. I put my lens near to the right side and turn up more with top of ceiling  so we can get the view like we have in 2D.

And this one will be have different when I move my camera lens to the center of tunnel. I will get the different angle , the lines will be symmetric.

2D and 3D piece

Last week I finalized my 2D drawing focusing on texture and depth. I like how it turned out and enjoyed working on it.

I then made a 3D piece based on the elements I enjoyed from the 2D drawing. I attempted to focus on a inverted cone with some added depth and texture around it. I ended up focusing on how to play with shadows by adding shapes on the outside of the cone and cutting openings on the inside. One possible improvement would be to add more shapes and cuts. I imagined a slightly more chaotic design, like my 2D drawing, where the shapes weren’t so predictable. Overall, I liked how it turned out and had fun making it!