I've finally completed my Altered Book (Artist Book); The Dreambook. I don't remember when I started but earlier this year and I'm happy to say I finished the cover up yesterday. This began as the book; The Landscapes of the Night by Christopher Evans. I'm the type that likes to stick with the theme of the book that's already there, for the most part. This book dealt with how dreams and sleep are important to humans and explored many facets of the unconscious mind. So I stuck with it.
While I adore elaborate covers on altered books I've seen, I usually do a simple cover, if I enhance it at all. This is probably the most "embellishment" I've ever done on a cover so far. I prefer my books to be able to sit on a bookshelf, hidden (almost) among regular books, so when it's pulled from it's shelf, you get the surprise.
Inside Front Cover: I debated about using just a simple patterned paper here to just cover up my "mess". I was actually working on the back cover when I realized I could simply paint the inside cover. This quote from Poe seemed to fit like a glove.
My background black paint has a pearlescent additive mixed in to give it a sparkling gleam in some places. How could I not doctor up my simple circle moon? Especially since my niece told me, "The moon has holes in it" when she and I were drawing Halloween pictures last month.
The First Pages: I originally intended to leave these two pages as sort of a Table of Contents as I love to make the artist book very "booklike". A listing of chapters has always grabbed my attention. And let's face it, as any book lover will tell you, there is nothing like cracking the spine at the beginning of a long anticipated book. It's the beginning...the start...and you've the whole thing in front of you. With that beginning in mind, I opted for a more "movie" like start...with the black theater morphing into light. You get a sample of the pages but my larger photo was very blurry so I show you the only words I put on the page. The rest is simply a sprayed background over gesso. (white gesso, Dylusions sprays Crushed Grape and Black, and Glimmer Mist Haunted Shadows for a bit more purple and that copper gleam)
The Back Inside cover: This was my experiment to see if the dye sprays would work the way I wanted on just the book cover. No gesso, no primer, no sealer. Worked like a charm. So added the black accents (sticker Dazzles from paperwishes.com, Steampunk collection, I think). Had a random tag that matched and wrote out my own little summary. I didn't mean to streak the ink but after it happened, I thought it just added something to the page, so I left it alone.
I finished up the last pages in this Artist Book but they are nothing spectacular so this completes the documentary on The Dreambook.
--Wy
"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you've lost a friend." ---Paul Sweeney
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