Creating an Artist Book with Inkvent Inks

My beloved Bogiperson celebrates their birthday on 25th of December, which is very convenient for us— we celebrate Hanukkah, and also reliably get Bogi’s birthday off work :)) This was a milestone birthday, and I wanted to create something special. I made an artist book. I used Col-O-Ring swatch cards and Diamine Inkvent shimmer inks, Canson papers, bookboard, and ribbon to create an accordion fold book that features my original poem handwritten over birds and beasts. Hope you enjoy this walk through the project. (Posted with Bogi’s permission).

Here is the finished product: an accordion fold book with handpainted covers, which folds out to display three internal pages with animals carrying lines which add up to a poem. The project is officially untitled, but I think its unofficial title might be “Reverb.”

I’ve been doing book arts on and off for a long time. In graduate school I decided to become more serious about this interest of mine, and took classes at UC Berkeley through their extension program and also, memorably, via a History of the Book practicum at the Bancroft Library. I learned bookbinding, both historical and modern, as well as letterpress, and got to work on some very old equipment. By the end of graduate school, I had a disabled toddler and needed a permanent position to support my visa; my first marriage was ending. I stopped doing art. In order not to explode I started writing stories — and the rest is history.

Over the years I came back to doing linocuts and letterpress on and off, mostly at the Lawrence Arts Center, but I did not return to bookmaking. Constructing books is laborious, and often thankless - it takes a human (especially an amateur like me) a long time to create a journal or a book by hand, and the payoff is often not worth the effort. But I wanted to do it for Bogi because I love them and because we’ve been together for ten years and I love them and love wins, is all I can say.

I started by thinking I’d do something much simpler - a small accordion fold with the poem written on birds. So I started by making some birds. I used scissors to cut them out freehand from the excellent Col-O-Ring ink testing book, which can be obtained from the Well-Appointed Desk and wherever quality stationery is sold :) I made a few birds, then doodled a few more birds and animals and cut those out too, and painted them with my collection of Inkvent shimmers - mostly from 2019 and 2021, and a few from 2022 (I do not have the new Inkvent).

Fish: Tempest; bird left: I forget but probably Winter Miracle; fox: Dusted Truffle; bird right: Vintage Copper.

I liked how the animals looked, so I wrote a poem and began doing mockups of the pages. While I originally planned to do two lines/animals per page, the composition needed more space. I was keeping the project under wraps, so I mocked it up on the inside door of my supply closet, which I could close quickly if Bogi came into my office :) this worked well for a while.

I cut the pages to a custom size, then created the covers by cutting bookboards and wrapping them in blue Canson paper (blue is Bogi’s favorite color!). I was apprehensive that I wouldn’t know how to make books after such a long time away from it, but it went fine. It wasn’t perfect and I am very rusty, but my hands remembered. I added end papers from a lovely astral/zodiac paper I got at Wonderfair, and added a ribbon I also sourced locally, from JoAnn’s Fabrics. Lawrence is a very good town for art.

After the book boards spent some time in the book press drying and becoming flatter, it occurred to me that I could decorate the cover. I painted a tree using Inkvent inks - Storm for the smaller trees, Dusted Truffle for the trunk and branches of the big tree, and Gold Star for the gold stars. I used Ferris Wheel Press Sunlit Jade for the leaves, but now I wish I had this year’s Merry and Bright.

It’s liberating to do things in the privacy of my home office without anybody waiting for a perfectly finished product — although at this point, Bogi was becoming suspicious of my activities. I think my secret was revealed through a jar of PVA glue I left to soak in the bathroom. :))

Then I added some beasts to the cover. In the final version, the beasts were gilt-trimmed using a gold gel pen. The two-tailed creature on the lower right is a nod to the Hungarian street art political party: The Two-Tailed Dog, aka Kétfarkú Kutya Párt.

After I was satisfied with the cover, I glued the poem-line animals to the internal pages, and added a dedication to the back cover. After a sojourn in the book press, the book was ready to for wrapping and gifting.

Bogi was very happy with the gift, and I am so glad I made it! The process was at times nerve-wracking - I am out of practice, and it took a long time - but the results were worth it. Ultimately I was happy to reconnect to my art.

Finished book with a bow tie

A panoramic view of the finished book when it is folded out for display

Now I’m itching to continue the practice, perhaps as an over the top way to document my ink swatches. What do you think? Please tell me on Instagram if you are so inclined.

See you in the new year!