We have had a peculiar May this year, as I write this the sun is shining as we would expect but earlier in the month we had miserable, grey, cold dreary weather which cast a gloom over everything. The bluebells have been lovely but not so plentiful as previous years. On one of our dog walks we spied a fox near the canal path. We watched as she made her way to a dense patch of brambles and wondered if she had any hungry cubs to feed.
The young fox illustration comes from “A Book of Days”, a birthday book I illustrated for Blackie and Son Ltd.
We had a very pleasant visit from artist friend
Celeste Goulding, who had traveled to England on holiday from Australia. You may remember Celeste
from a previous post? This time we enjoyed an actual rather than a virtual cup of tea. It was so nice to meet her in person.
Work has been busy, getting design collections ready for Surtex, an annual trade fair in New York. I did however find the time to attend a bookbinding workshop with Glenn Malkin, a bookbinder from East Yorkshire. Glenn is an amazing and inspirational craftsman who has a bindery called
Signature Bindings Glenn specializes in affordable bindings and repairs, journals and fine bindings. His website contains useful information about forthcoming workshops and events as well as showcasing his award winning designer bindings.
In the one-day workshop we managed to complete three books. One wrap around binding, one Japanese stab binding and a little single section cased binding. All the materials were supplied including the lovely marbled papers. I was especially pleased with the book, which utilized part of an old map, an idea I am sure I will use again.
Maybe next time I will remember that as this structure is covered with a map it has a front, back a head and a tail. I managed to create a back and a front the same way up but would have preferred the back to be the front, although in Japan it would have worked perfectly!
Finally I have been creating an
online print shop with Society6, the shop currently offers art prints and stretched canvases, and I hope to add more images in due course.
