Liz Lara

i love making books. right now, i'm not sure there is anything i enjoy creating more than a book. as an art maker, it's a rather phenomenal feelings. I don't really feel an attachment to the books i create, but I feel an enormous love for the hours I spend with them. 

This book and I spent many hours growing and changing and reevaluating each other. I learned how to make clamshell boxes with this book. I learned the ins and out of illustration with this book. I embraced mistakes. And this book and I thought about love a lot. I trusted my instincts and so did the book. 

Technical stuff: 

The outer box is a clamshell structure, covered in handpainted 100% 200 threadcount cotton. I used acrylic washes in purple, pink, light blue, and green. The box has a pink paper inset with the recurring wink. It is made entirely of binder's board. I added two holes, accented with eyelets and ribbons to hold the box shut. 

The book is a coptic binding, where the sheets, rather than folded are attached at the seem with a clear laminate. This allows for the binding thread (waxed yellow linen, 5threadcount) to show all the way through. The laminate binding also creates a nice sound when first opened. The paper is watercolor paper, textured on one side, smooth on the other. Everything is hand written and drawn. 

Currently the illustrations are not finished. I found, and was recommended by my bookmaking instructor to work the illustration in phases. Rather than completing a page of illustration and moving on to the next one, I do a sort of step-guided illustration. I worked watercolor washes throughout the book. I filled in the text in pen. Next I sketched in the characters in colored pencil, giving them just the gestural suggestions of their final state with a splash of color, and that is where I've left the book for now. 

Content: