Board Book Journal

Last May at our Portland Art Collective retreat, I made this 6x6 inch board book inspired by Juju Vail's article in Cloth Paper Scissors. I tore 2 inch squares of different papers on hand, glued them onto the board book pages and gessoed over them.

I wanted more color for the cover so I painted over each square with dilute watercolors.

I added black gaffers tape to reinforce the spine and outlined the edges with a large black Sharpie and added the title.

While at the PLAY retreat, I discovered Jesse Reno. His book Truth Will Measure captured my imagination. Juju drew her images in pencil. Charcoal and pencil are too messy for me. I drew these figures in Reno's style with my Pitt pens, added Neocolor II Caran d'Ache water-soluble wax pastels for vibrant color and Tracy Moore's hand-carved stamps. The new Sharpie paint markers write over the wax pastels with ease.

Here's a page in progress. Gwen carved the wonderful eye stamp and now I need to add color and texture to the face and finish the page. To work on developing my own style, I'm practicing drawing in the styles of artists I like or whose work speaks to me. I'll share more of these pages in the future.