Thursday, March 13, 2014

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP


Each of the bus-cluster of recent troubles seems to be on the way to resolution and life is back to relative tranquility, with an added bonus of better weather. Strangely but appropriately enough there was a ladybug on my windowsill this morning.


Brought on by a now redundant but initially traumatic misunderstanding, a radical decision was made concerning the illustrations for the Blaise Cendrars Trans-Siberian Express book: to use only black and white for the images, rather than multiple colour blocks, but to print the text in several colours. Far from diminishing the visual excitment, this approach powerfully enhances the harmony of text and image on each page. It also allows me to work much more speedily, with only one block to cut and proof per page. 


Below are examples of proofs I've taken from a few new blocks. They don't show the actual page dimensions or layout and the text in the bottom one is only pasted in, not hand-printed and in colour as it will be in the final version. As I've explained in previous posts, I'm cutting all image blocks from vinyl floor tiles.