new "traces"

Last year I bought a little handmade book from Trace Willans. I have posted some of her work before particularly the collaborative pieces we have done together. It was "empty" except for traces of marks, stains and wax. These previous presences from another artist became the source of my drawings. It is bound using coptic binding and stained strips of  calico. 

I have had this book I've called "Traces", for many months without doing anything with it until recently. Most of the staining which Trace uses is xanthorhea resin which leaves a lovely warm brown, earthy mark. I have stained some paper for bookmaking with it recently and discovered that it keeps getting a bit darker as it is exposed to light. Since these marks are all inside the book on nice thick 200gsm stonehenge paper, they make a great start to focus my drawings around. I used a variety of mixed media including pencil, ink, wax, gouache, pastel, water soluble crayons, charcoal and collage. I was on holidays in Lennox Heads, northern NSW and think the drawings were influenced by the harsh, dry feel of the native scrub in the area. 

As there are many more drawings to "Traces" I will put them up on my website when I get a chance if you are interested.

"5D"

cover 

I've just finished another little concertina fold book of exploratory drawings that I started ages ago when using earth pigments sealed with plant resin. I used these on Chinese printing paper for covering the card for the cover but used more conventional mixed media for the drawings.

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It is always exciting when you complete something quite different to anything you've ever done before. Particularly when you had no idea where to start or even which materials would work. I find this sort of aesthetic problem solving works best if approached slowly and done little by little over an extended period to let ideas infuse from the pages.

I have just recently "finished" this little book made by Trace Willans of papers,wax and resins. In this different collaboration, Trace sends me the "blank" book , which has juicy pages stained with natural materials and waxed in abstract surfaces and I interact with the pages with a variety of materials.

To give you some idea of the scale, this little book is only 6.5 x 8 cms closed. I hope you enjoy some of the images inside.

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