Accordion book 2

Never having done an accordion book before, I was really intrigued by the idea of the connected pages. I liked how they were all connected, yet could be presented separately as well. I was inspired in part by the book cover being made by tree bark...and thought that as I know next to nothing about the life cycle of the silkworm, that I'd do the life cycle of trees (after a fashion, anyway).


We live in what is at times a very conflicted part of BC. There are many, many families that make their living from deforestation, and many that make their living from reforestation. There are a few strong souls that seem to be able to bridge that gap and see that they are both part of the same industry, but those are not in the majority in my experience. Both sides tend to be quite militant that their way is the right way. I thought that the connected continuous pages gave an opportunity to look at the life cycle of forestry, both as a continuum and as separate views of different parts of the continuum.


Of course this view is mine, and is therefore oversimplified...there were no trees injured in the making of this book (except for the ones felled to make the paper. Oh, and perhaps the Mulberry tree that gave up some bark for the cover)! :)

Here are all the pages of the book, shown separately.

A few notes about construction here:

If I'd known that this was the direction the illustration would take, I'd have not used rivets to attach the pages. I probably would have done the paintings, then glued the pages together and applied the cover. The rivets are a bit distracting (not to mention tough to paint around!). I do like that their colour is tied in, though.

The painting is done with watercolour, then overdrawn with india ink using a dip nib scratch pen. I love the character of line that this pen gives and have never found anything like it, ever. It is still my favorite drawing tool ever, after all these years.

The goal with the pages was to have drawings that could stand reasonably well on their own as individual compositions, but that also had their place within the whole.

By the way, I named the book, "Tribute to The Lorax" (a wonderful book by Theodore Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss).

I really enjoyed this project and will be quick to try something like it again. It's interesting that once I got my head going down this kind of no-words storytelling path that other ideas started presenting themselves.

For the record, I did read up on Silk Moth life cycle, but decided that it didn't quite fit the format. There are 4 distinct stages in the Moth's life, and I couldn't come up with a way to stretch it into 6 distinct frames without overemphasizing something or making it awkward.


Oh - and the pages for this book are 4" square. Depending on your screen, you may be able to view the pictures much larger than they are in real life...I saved them quite big (in pixels) for the curious types who like to click on them and look at the enlargements.


At the end here you will find the book, each side in its entirety.

Now tomorrow I need to attach the closing tie, then the project will be done...only a week overdue!


Happy trails,

Lisa