Tiny Tunnel Book

Tunnel book inside frame measures 1.5 x 2.75in

Watercolor on Arches paper, handcut

Mr. Mole

I posted about this piece a while back but this was before I had nice pictures of the finish. This is a tunnel book about the opening scene of Wind in the Willows when Mr. Mole becomes fed up with his underground life and decides to leave his mole hole. I finally got a chance to take nice photographs and here they are:

The Wind in the Willows

A little while ago I was exploring Netflix and I found the old stop-motion animation Wind in the Willows program that we for some reason had taped on VHS that I would just watch on repeat when I was a kid. You know, this one:

And I remembered just how much I had loved the Wind in the Willows story so I sat down that afternoon and read the whole book. Suddenly, I realized, I should be doing drawings based on the story. And not just drawings...tunnel books. So I began the process of sketching out a tunnel book from the first paragraph:

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gavelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, 'Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow." 

Mr. Mole preliminary sketches

Tunnel Book Sketch

A few water colors and a few cut up fingers later, construction began.

And this is pretty much it.

I want to make a series of these so I can make a little star book out of them. There will be more better pictures to follow but I can't photograph the piece....until it gets back from the show it's in! I will post more about the show soon.

It's Alive!

This weekend my mom came a-visitin' to Boston this weekend and she brought her brand new copy of 1,000 Artists' Books. Which as I mentioned in this post, includes my tunnel book, 'Tavern in the Green':

You know, this one:

Also a shout out to my friend Stefan Volatile-Wood whose work is also in the book and can be seen here:

http://stefanvolatilewood.tumblr.com/

You can purchase a copy of the book, for a relatively cheap $16.16 on Amazon. Yay!

Guess Who's Getting Published?

Over the summer I found on online call for Artists Books to be published by Quarry Books in the upcoming year. I applied, crossed my fingers and forgot about it for a little while. I mean, a shot in 1,000 doesn't seem like such long odds but people were applying from all over the world. I heard back a little while ago and my tunnel book "Tavern In the Green" was accepted!

 

 The book will be available in June 2012 and I cannot wait!

Click the image for more info.

"The book is a timeless art form, one that is as alive today as ever before, and artists continue to explore and explode the boundaries of what a book is and can be. In this beautiful collection, you will experience close-up various aspects of hand-crafted books: covers, bindings, scrolls, folded and origami structures and books made from found objects. You will find richly illustrated and calligraphed pages as well as books created from a variety of printed processes. Ingenuity and creativity abounds in this carefully curated collection of both historically important and modern works."

Also appearing in the book is my friend Stefan, he's pretty rad, check it out:

http://stefanvolatilewood.carbonmade.com/

It Is Not Only Fine Feathers That Make Fine Birds

So this is actually back from in December, but I finally got around to photographing it. The tunnel book depicts one of Aesop's Fables called "The Jay and the Peacock" which goes like this:

A Jay venturing into a yard where Peacocks used to walk, found
there a number of feathers which had fallen from the Peacocks when
they were moulting.  He tied them all to his tail and strutted
down towards the Peacocks.  When he came near them they soon
discovered the cheat, and striding up to him pecked at him and
plucked away his borrowed plumes.  So the Jay could do no better
than go back to the other Jays, who had watched his behaviour from
a distance; but they were equally annoyed with him, and told him:


 "It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds."

This is the tunnel book in all its three dimensional glory.

This is a scan of all the flattened layers. It just captures the color better.

As usual, its all watercolor (although this time with a bit of gouache in all those feathers).

Oh my, It's in a Gallery!

Sure you can barely see it in the picture and there are hundreds of other ones around it, but here's my work in the gallery!

Yeah, I had to draw a circle around it so you know where it is but there are better pictures in my last post.
Also this is not my picture, I couldn't actually attend the show, some wonderful soul who could posted them on the Facebook event page and they have my thanks. Hopefully there will be some better photos soon from my wonderful family who could attend the show for me.

Submerged

Over the summer I found a call for art in my hometown to participate in a show called 'Submerged: Third Annual Mini Works Show.' I read the requirements, the piece had to be exactly 5 x 5 inches and somehow work with the theme of Submerged. I knew creating something so small would be right up my alley, but I didn't quite know what to do with the theme. All I could think of were those big old submersibles they used to use to explore underwater, something along the lines of Bill Murray's boat in 'Life Aquatic.' So I went from there. Knowing I didn't just want to do a tiny traditional drawing, I created the piece in layers to give that feeling of depth that comes with being submerged. The final result was a small tunnel book:

I finished it 5 minutes before I left to go to Scotland and asked my dad to submit it for me, hoping I would hear back as to whether or not it got accepted while I was away. A few days ago I received an e-mail, my piece was in! Now fingers crossed someone will actually buy it...