The First Poetry Pages......

Hello All,

Today I made my first altered book "Poetry Pages".

This is how it started: as I said in my earlier post, I plan to take my

inspiration from the words on the page....... to avoid that "I really want to paint

something, but WHAT?" problem. I painted gesso to strengthen and seal the paper

but just left the word bits that I wanted.

"A Griffin, wheeling here and there about,
 Kept reconnoitring us...."

Stencilled wings and drew a griffin, and added texture paste.

"Beheld afar off, in the hooded shade
Of darkness, a great mountain (strange to speak)
Spitting, from forth it's sulphur-baken peak..."

This side collage, stencil and texture paste.

And lots of acrylic washes and runs.

I like this poetry thing. It's funny when you see things in a photograph, think I

need some bright yellow in the bottom right hand corner for balance?????

Maybe tomorrow.

Bye for now, Penny.

The Beginnings of an Altered Book....

Hello All,

Sometimes when playing with paints, inks and drawing, it is good to

get away from a blank white page. Thinking about that, I found a scruffy

old book in the charity shop, "The Poetical Works of John Keats". It came

to mind that not only would it give a good base to work on, but might also

provide inspirational prompts to create the pages.

I have started stitching groups of pages together to give them more strength to

take the paint, sometimes adding beads.

A bit of a problem though.........keep getting distracted reading the verse!

Always have that guilty feeling "spoiling" a book, but this one is very

much past it's best so that's fine.

It will be an ongoing project, so expect to see how it's going from time to time.

Probably involving gesso.........sigh :(

Bye for now, P.