ABSTRACT WATERCOLOUR AND MINI ORIGAMI ALBUMS
Shoshi the Loose Woman!
After doing so much highly detailed work recently, I have felt the urge to go loose and splash a bit of paint around. One’s gotta loosen up a bit once in a while! This is by way of an interlude before I begin my next Domestika course, which is also going to be quite detailed.
Watercolour randomness
Following on from my recent paper dyeing venture, I selected two of the tea-dyed sheets and prepped them with some Golden Satin Glazing Liquid as a ground, and then painted some random watercolour shapes on them. I used a combination of my regular watercolour set, and the Kuretake Graphite and Art Nouveau sets. I used the graphite ones only on the first sheet, which I deliberately kept quite grungey.
I like how the tea dyeing has muted the colours of the paints. It’s quite subtle.
Origami albums
There are numerous instructions online for creating mini-books from a single sheet of paper so I won’t go into details here. I have done this before with a 12 x 12 in sheet, resulting in a mini-album which was 3 inches square. To create a rectangular booklet with portrait orientation, you need to make the cuts with the paper in landscape orientation, and vice versa. The folding results in a small book with the ability to create alternating top and side pockets for tags if you want. Alternatively, you can leave it as it is, which makes it somewhat unstable and liable to unfold itself, or you can glue the pages together to fix them.
You can also make a detachable origami cover which will wrap around the spine, concealing the folds, and making a nice neat job. You tuck the front and back pages into this, to hold it in place.
I have decided to make two albums in this way. One will be made from the grungey sheet and will be a selection of patterns inspired by Gustav Klimt. The other one, being more colourful, will be for a collection of random watercolour doodles and mark making. This is the one I am beginning with.
Watercolour doodles and mark making
I have been following the artist Denise Love on YouTube and she has inspired me to do more watercolour doodling. I haven’t done any for quite a while, and I was very taken with her beautiful examples.
An abstract watercolour book
She recommended a book on the subject, which I have now bought, and it’s a great resource for inspiration.
I can see I am going to have a lot of fun with this.
She has also done a video on the Klimt inspiration and I shall go into more detail on that when I post about the second mini-album.
The two mini-books assembled
As I worked on these simultaneously, I’ve decided to post about their construction together.
I have glued the pages together to make the books stable, using Scotch glue stick.
The front and back are just the plain tea-dyed paper. I have not done any work on these, because I have decided to glue them into the covers that I shall make. There is no advantage to making an origami-style cover for these as it won’t need to be removed, and also, the cover would conceal the first and last pages.
Inside, there are eight double-page spreads, plenty of room for playing and having fun with mark making and pattern!
The pages
I am always amazed how different a large sheet of random watercolouring or doodling looks once it is folded or cut up into smaller units! Sometimes the whole sheet looks a bit of a mess, but reduced down, the marks become intriguing and definitely a good basis for further work. I love the randomness of it all.
The one at the bottom in each case in the following photos will be used for the Klimt patterns.
I shall be posting further after I’ve completed the mark making on the first album.
