Ruby Pepperdine

It's All Coming Together

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dear Students

Making comics comes naturally to most kids. Here one of my 4K kids draws a sequential store at On index cards and then asked me to writer down “the words part”

I’m always knocked out by these stories.

Professor Hantu

[rubypepperdine]

Non-Linear Nabokov: Drop the Index Cards and Publish

Novels by permutation: a novel approach

[midwestconservator-deactivated2]

A Disgruntled Federal Employee’s 1980s Desk Calendar

Relive the best decade through the angry, colorful notations of an anonymous employee at the Department of Defense: “Twenty-one months of Reagan left!”

So wonderful!

[art-woonz]

[in-the-horniman]

This tiny book (nn4814.142) is part of a dolls house currently being prepared for display. The book is amusingly titled ‘The Mite’, and is full of historical facts and figures, despite its miniature form. There are also a number of printed illustrations, like the rather pensive looking owl, shown in the second photograph. Sadly, adhesive putty has been used in the past to secure the book to a doll, and will need to be treated by our hard-working conservation team to remove.

[rubypepperdine]

We have gathered for the professional graphic designer, in one complete collection, all the essential knowledge you will need and use every day, to work, thrive and succeed. There’s no other place like DI anywhere on the Net today!

[free-parking-blog]

Xu Bing — Tian Shu (Book from the Sky), 1987-1991

Tian Shu is comprised of a display of books spread in a large rectangle across the ground, above which voluptuous scrolls unroll in long, pregnant arcs. The books—four hundred of them—are handmade with reverential adherence to the standards of traditional Ming dynasty fonts, bookbinding, typesetting and stringing techniques. 

To make them, Xu painstakingly carved Chinese characters into square woodblocks, in just the way his ancient printing predecessors would have done, had them typeset and printed, and the printed pages mounted and bound into books and scrolls.

Yet, there’s the astonishing, Borgesian catch: out of the three or four thousand Chinese characters used in these volumes and scrolls, not a single one of them is a real Chinese character. They are made up of recognizable radicals and typical atomic components of Chinese characters, but Xu laboured to ensure that while they all retain the unmistakable look of Chinese script, they are all, so to speak, nonsense. They do not exist in any dictionary, and do not mean anything. Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers alike approach the books with the same sense of wonder at their beauty, and the same sense of incomprehension at their content. It’s a piece of art whose meaning is to be found in its meaninglessness. (via)

[bookmakingad5005]

These are some of my favourite books I have seen whilst looking for techniques and a few techniques that caught my eye. I have realised that making a complete string handle for the book will be far to complicated and time consuming so I just want to use the last images technique. I have found the instructions for it here: http://beccamakingfaces.com/2011/06/06/japanese-stab-binding-tutorial-marionette/ 

It isnt the same as a handle but it still takes up a lot of space and looks nice.

[leafprinterbooks]

Here is my latest miniature book.

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/471483980/all-about-dogs-a-12th-scale-handmade

[diamondheroes-deactivated201908]

The Grand Budapest Hotel: day & Night

[love]

Life’s Lil Pleasures Vol. 1 & 2 by Evan Lorenzen

[appendixjournal]

Thomas Jefferson’s pocket notebooks, composed of erasable ivory plates on which he would write scientific observations and memoranda before copying them into notebooks in the evening. At Monticello.

[bitacoradelviaje]

[librarycompany]

An image that inspires joy (and sometimes jealousy) are these bindery tools. We make any excuse to see what conservation is up to, and learning about the tools they use is no exception. The well-loved book is their forte, and well we love books. 

[librarycompany]

“this was my mother’s little book”

For #TheWritingHandKnows challenge, we are sharing this little book that was used as a notebook in the 19th century. The notebook contains entries dated from 1866 to 1884, many of which list the death date and relationship of deceased relatives. The inscription featured in this post reads “this was my mother’s little book” alongside a drawing with another inscription stating “my mother drew this picture”. Is it possible these inscriptions were added to the notebook after the original owner, the inscriber’s mother, passed away? Only #TheWritingHandKnows

[csms-jpg]

Journals + 5 more I’m currently using

[thenearsightedmonkey]

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dear Making Comics Class,

Gary Panter is someone who knows very good things about keeping a sketchbook. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do in you composition notebooks while I’m away.

Love,

Professor Sluggo

From the “Unbored” website:  from the great GARY PANTER INTRODUCTION

Get a book-size (or paperback-size)d sketchbook. Write your name and date on an early page and maybe think of a name for it — and if you want, write the book’s name there at the front. Make it into your little painful pal. The pain goes away slowly page by page. Fill it up and do another one. It can be hard to get started. Don’t flunk yourself before you get the ball rolling.

You might want to draw more realistically or in perspective or so it looks slick — that’s is possible and there are tricks and procedures for drawing with more realism if you desire it. But drawing very realistically with great finesse can sometimes produce dead uninteresting drawings — relative, that is, to a drawing with heart and charm and effort but no great finesse.

You can make all kinds of rules for your art making, but for starting in a sketchbook, you need to jump in and get over the intimidation part — by messing up a few pages, ripping them out if need be. Waste all the pages you want by drawing a tic tac toe schematic or something, painting them black, just doodle. Every drawing will make you a little better. Every little attempt is a step in the direction of drawing becoming a part of your life.

TIPS

1. Quickly subdivide a page into a bunch of boxes by drawing a set of generally equidistant vertical lines, then a set of horizontal lines so that you have between 6 and 12 boxes or so on the page. In each box, in turn, in the simplest way possible, name every object you can think of and draw each thing in a box, not repeating. If it is fun, keep doing this on following pages until you get tired or can’t think of more nouns. Now you see that you have some kind of ability to typify the objects in your world and that in some sense you can draw anything.

2. Choose one of the objects that came to mind that you drew and devote one page to drawing that object with your eyes closed, starting at the “nose” of the object (in outline or silhouette might be good) and following the contour you see in your mind’s eye, describing to yourself in minute detail what you know about the object. You can use your free hand to keep track of the edge of the paper and ideally your starting point so that you can work your way back to the designated nose. Don’t worry about proportion or good drawing this is all about memory and moving your hand to find the shapes you are remembering. The drawing will be a mess, but if you take your time, you will see that you know a lot more about the object than you thought.

3. Trace some drawings you like to see better what the artist’s pencil or pen is doing. Tracing helps you observe closer. Copy art you like — it can’t hurt.

4. Most people (even your favorite artists) don’t like their drawings as much as they want to. Why? Because it is easy to imagine something better. This is only ambition, which is not a bad thing — but if you can accept what you are doing, of course you will progress quicker to a more satisfying level and also accidentally make perfectly charming drawings even if they embarrass you.

5. Draw a bunch more boxes and walk down a sidewalk or two documenting where the cracks and gum and splotches and leaves and mowed grass bits are on the square. Do a bunch of those. That is how nature arranges and composes stuff. Remember these ideas — they are in your sketchbook.

6. Sit somewhere and draw fast little drawings of people who are far away enough that you can only see the big simple shapes of their coats and bags and arms and hats and feet. Draw a lot of them. People are alike yet not — reduce them to simple and achievable shapes.

7. To get better with figure drawing, get someone to pose — or use photos — and do slow drawing of hands, feet, elbows, knees, and ankles. Drawing all the bones in a skeleton is also good, because it will help you see how the bones in the arms and legs cross each other and affect the arms’ and legs’ exterior shapes. When you draw a head from the side make sure you indicate enough room behind the ears for the brain case.

8. Do line drawings looking for the big shapes, and tonal drawing observing the light situation of your subject — that is, where the light is coming from and where it makes shapes in shade on the form, and where light reflects back onto the dark areas sometimes.

9. To draw the scene in front of you, choose the middle thing in your drawing and put it in the middle of your page — then add on to the drawing from the center of the page out.

10. Don’t worry about a style. It will creep up on you and eventually you will have to undo it in order to go further. Be like a river and accept everything.

Thanks to our pal, M.A.G. for bringing this to our attention

[thenearsightedmonkey]

Dear Students,

This is very good advice.

Sincerely,

Prof. Hantu