Book binding

On the 18th October I was taught how to make hardback books. I really enjoyed the process, and found it very rewarding, especially as you finish up with a very professional looking book which you, yourself, created.

Below is the process we all followed to create the books. There was a large amount of information to take in during the lesson so as we went along I recorded brief notes that I could later refer back to.

1. Fold each individual section down the centre crease with the bonefolder.
2. Mark an inch inwards along the new seam from the edges of the section.
3. Place the tapes evenly between the two marks you have just created and mark each side of them.
4. Use a ruler to replicate these lines onto all the other sections.
5. With a craft knife cut the ruler marks. Make sure you go the whole way through each section.
6. Next, using masking tape, attach the two pieces of tape to the edge of your work area.
7. Place the bottom section of the book on the work surface so it measures up with the two pieces of tape now stuck to the side.
8. Thread the needle, making sure you double it up.
9. Make sure you leave plenty of tail at the beginning of the sewing.
10. Weave your way through each hole you created using the craft knife. (Make sure you sew around the two pieces of tape). Once, you reach the end, lay the next section of book on top and then weave through each hole of the next section.
11. Then double knot the thread to the tail you left at the beginning. When tying any knot make sure you pull he needle and thread upwards and away.
12. You then add the 3rd layer of section and, like before, sew through the holes.
13. However, once you get to the end this time you must tie a kettle knot.
14. Keep repeating this process until all the sections are tied together.
15. Place in a vice or under some heavy weights. This helps it flatten down.
16. Fill in the seam of the book with PVA glue.
17. Add two more coats of PVA, making sure each coat is dry before adding the next.
18. Next appeal a strip of binding fabric onto the seam of the book, use PVA as the adhesive.
19. You can now cut the ends of the two pieces of tape off.
20. Trim your selected coloured card to roughly the size of the book and glue to the front and back pages.
21. Once dry, trim the edges of the book to create crisp, clean lines.
22. Cut out two rectangles of cardboard, normally 3mm bigger than your book.
23. Also measure the spine of the book.
24. Get some special fabric, roughly A2 size. Lay this face down, place the rectangles and spine piece on the fabric and draw around.
25. Cut a 45 degree angle on each corner, making sure you doing go too close to the actual corner.
26. Using very little PVA, glue the cardoard and spine onto the fabric, making sure there are no bubbles.
27. Fold the corners of the fabric over the cardboard to create a crisp edge.
28. Stick the coloured paper to the cover starting with the front and then moving the book so that you can stick down the back cover.

What am I?

What did you used to be?
Naive.

What are you now?
Developing, learning and growing as a person.

What do you want to be, and how?
Successful, enjoying my career (not many people can say they do) and loving life. I intend to reach these targets by working hard, listening to my piers and tutors, but also by believing in myself.

Egon Schiele

Self-Portrait with Orange Cloak
1913
Watercolour, gouache, and pencil.
Signed and dated, lower right.
48 x 31.5 cm
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

The piece I am going to evaluate is a self-portrait by Egon Schiele. The painting, done using oil paint, shows himself, particularly thin, in the centre of the canvas, with a lifted hand holding his chin. His head is tilted to the right. Using acrylic paint Schiele shows a mixture of different strokes to create the overall image. The texture of the jacket has been created by bold brush stroke, whereas the face still uses bold strokes but just a lot thinner.

This piece shows the twisted, obscure and warped way in which Egon Schiele views himself. He created this piece when he was a young man, however the image portrayed to the viewer is completely different. His hands for instance, are extremely thin and aged, unlike the real life subject.

Egon Schiele either dislikes his actual face and is trying to hide it in this abstracted piece or he is trying to express more than just his facial features. In other words is he trying to capture his feelings, emotions and views instead of an accurate portrait? This would be backed up with the fact that the painting is so powerful and full of vigor. Schiele uses such harsh, bold outlines that it suggests he was trying to show the viewer more than an image of himself. Whichever Egon Schiele was actually trying to achieve this piece is still successful.

Graham Sutherland

Portrait of Sommerset Maugham

1953
Original lithograph in black ink.
Signed in ballpoint ink, and dated 'Dec 22nd '54'.
Also inscribed: Trial Proof (in ink) and No 4 in pencil.

I intend to look at a pencil study Graham Sutherland produced of the famous writer Somerset Maughan. The piece shows Maughan as an elderly man, with an expression that conveys wisdom, intelligence, and a touch of humour. There appear to be deep laughter lines around his eyes.

Sutherland has managed to capture Maughan so well due to an extraordinarily high quality of observation. Sutherland has paid close attention to the surface of the skin creating a face very much like a rugged landscape. This is an interesting link between old, worn faces and landscapes. I believe Sutherland has made this link so intense by using light. Maughan’s face is lit strongly from the left hand side (the sitter’s right). The shading on the right accentuates the wrinkles and the sculptural qualities of his face, making it look more 3D.

However, to keep the study looking like a face Sutherland has used a series of lines and strokes to define the muscles.

The pencil study is a sketch, which was part of his research towards a formal portrait of Maughan.

Jenny Saville

Plan
1993, oil on Canvas,
274.5 x 213.5cm
The Saatchi Collection, London

Closed Contact #10
1996

Jenny Saville is my first female artist I am going to look at. She was born in Cambridge, England, in 1970. She is a contemporary British painter and one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). She is known for her monumental images of obese women, usually using herself as the model.

She gained her degree at Glasgow School of Art and was then awarded a six month scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where she says that she saw "Lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and T-shirts. It was good to see because they had the physicality that I was interested in." She studied at the Slade School Of Art 1992-1993. At the end of her postgraduate education at the Slade, the leading British art collector Charles Saatchi purchased her entire senior show and commissioned works for another two years. In 1994 she spent many hours observing plastic surgery operations in New York in 1994. Today, Saville works and lives in London and is a tutor of figure painting at the Slade School of Art.

Saville is unique amongst the YBAs for her dedication to the "traditional" art of oil painting. Her painterly style has been compared to that of Lucian Freud and Rubens. Her paintings are usually much larger than life size. They are strongly pigmented and give a highly sensual impression of the surface of the skin as well as the mass of the body. She sometimes adds marks onto the body, such as white "target" rings. Since her debut in 1992, her focus has remained on the body.

Her self-portraits are different from any other artists’ due to the obvious fact that she paints her body not her face. This will hopefully, give me a different perspective on artists developing their styles over time.

The two pieces I have picked were both painted within a time gap of 3 years. Therefore, it is harder to notice a significant difference. However, having said that there are differences which stand out. The first one shows her body and face looking down onto the viewer; and the second shows her body squashed against glass above the viewer. This shows she is experimenting with different angles and perspectives. She is testing out which angles create the most impact and impression.

Jenny Saville is an artist who is still experimenting with positions; light sources; and perspectives. Therefore, I do not believe Saville has established her style beyond knowing what her subject matter is; distorting her body. She is still evolving as an artist.

Tai-Shan Schierenberg

Glass
2004
Oil on copper

Tai-Shan Schierenberg is a painter of portraits, figures and landscapes. He studies at St.Martin’s College and The Slade Schools of Art (1981-87) and has subsequently had one-man shows at Flowers East in Hackney.



Schierenberg’s work generally consists of intimate portraits of family and friends. However, in 1989 he won first prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s John Player Portrait Award and as part of the price was commissioned to paint the portrait or playwright John Mortimer for the Gallery’s collection. He has also painted portraits of Lord Carrington (1994), Lord Sainsbury (2002) and most recently Seamus Heaney (2004). All of which are held at the National Portrait Gallery.



His subtle landscapes show remarkable insight into the content – psychological and aesthetic – of his work. Schierenberg sees the paint as not only a medium for expressing his ideas but he also uses the paint as flesh. His work is both abstract and realist; tense but sensitive; grand and inconclusive; violent and melancholic; physically intense and aesthetically detached.



He, like Richard Diebenkorn, uses bold colours and brush strokes to create light and dark areas on the object. This piece, called ‘glass’ highlights this use of stroke. The crisp markings really create a sense of the glass and the light reflecting off it. The simplicity of the composition adds to the impact of the confident stokes. There is also the straight line going down from the left to the right, this line can be seen in all three of the pictures shown here. It is a prominent feature in his work. It helps the viewers eye be drawn down to the reflection of the glass and the light shining through it. I also think the light reflections in the glass add to the whole piece, as they allow more of the glass’s detail to be picked up upon. I really enjoy this piece, as it is so simple and uncomplicated.



However, studying the piece in more detail, I believe, the simplicity of the piece is its secret; there is a deeper meaning/secret story in this piece, hidden in the glass. Where has the glass been? Why this glass? If you look at the piece in this way it develops beyond the ‘simple’ piece I first thought it was.

Lucian Freud

Self-portrait

1963, oil on canvas

National Portrait Gallery

Reflection (self-portrait)
1985, oil on canvas
51 x 56 cm
Private collection

Lucian Freud is a German-born British painter. He was born in 1922 in Berlin, came to England with his parents in 1931, and acquired British nationality in 1939. His work has taken many turns and different directions over the years. He is a very diverse artist who has stood the test off time.


His early work was meticulously painted, so he has sometimes been described as a ‘Realist’, but the subjectivity and intensity of his work has always set him apart from the traditional characteristic of most British figurative art since the Second World War. In his later work (from the late 1950s) his handling became much broader.


In the second piece Freud has created an image of impressive force and truth. The self-portrait is a good likeness, but, as all portraits must, it emphasises an aspect of the sitter – in this case, the effects of ageing, unflinchingly observed.


Like Rembrandt, Freud has painted himself continually throughout his life. This results in Freud documenting his facial changing features and his work as an artist over the years. During these years Freud has painted himself in all manner of ways: caught in a shaving-mirror; from below; and, memorably, wearing nothing but the old boots he wears for painting to avoid getting pigment on his shoes.


The two pieces I have picked show a sharp contrast. The first, ‘Self-portrait’, 1963, oil on canvas, is bold, with strong brush strokes capturing the essence of Freud’s face. In this piece Freud is more interested in form and how the piece works overall. However, with time his work developed into being more detailed and accurate. In the second piece, ‘Reflection’ produced in 1985 using oil on canvas, shows traces of the bold markings Freud used to use so much. However, they have moved into the background and detail and precision have taken over. The piece shows the eye is on he golden section; therefore aiding the viewer to be led around the piece.


Lucian Freud’s way of painting, the detail he creates, has changed over time as I have talked about however, the colour palette he uses is still the same; earthy browns, yellows, reds and greens. And yes, his age and changing face are shown clearly in his pieces. No one in art history has scrutinised his own appearance for more of his life than Lucian Freud. The truth is important to him.


Freud has one of the most powerful and unusual personalities in contemporary art, but – paradoxically, perhaps – he believes strongly that the only important thing is the picture itself. That is perhaps why his titles are often calculatedly general – Naked Portrait, Head of Girl, Man Smoking.