Assignment 1: Introduction - Self Portrait. Making and completion

 In my previous post I started to describe the making process of my little book, My Inner Circle. In this post I will continue that process and then show a gallery of photographs of the finished book. 

I began by printing and cropping all the things I needed: title pages, collage images and titled writing pages. I then drew on and inked them as described previously. Then I started sticking everything together. I use Yes! glue because it stops, and even removes, wrinkling that often occurs when sticking paper. The glue has to go over the entire surface, not just the edges, to have the anti-wrinkling effect. I’ve never been one for glue brushes, my fingers go straight in the pot! So I keep a damp cloth nearby to try to avoid gluing that which should not be glued - mostly myself! 

I decided to sew the binding before sticking in the collages and writing papers. It’s a bit more fiddly that way, but easier to get things properly aligned. It’s a very simple pamphlet binding, the main point of interest being that it opens in two directions. I chose this binding because my collages fall into two distinct groups. 

In the photo above it’s just possible to see that, in one section of the book, I’ve incorporated some bubble wrap into the binding, edged with Fragile packing tape. One of the questions asked in the brief for this assignment was whether there’s anything we decided to leave out  I thought quite a lot about whether I wanted to include all of the images as some of them are not what I’d choose to share with someone in an initial introduction  I decided to keep them in because I didn’t want to divide myself up or for parts of myself to be missing  it seemed to lack integrity when I tried to set them aside. In the end I decided to include them, but to indicate that these parts of myself or my life need gentleness  I had the bubble wrap and tape out for packaging Christmas presents and it occurred to me to use them as a protective binding for the parts of myself that are harder to share  

I then stuck everything else in place, and added the writing last of all. 

Here it is in its complete form viewed from above, followed by a page by page gallery. 

Overall I’m happy with how the book turned out. However, there are a couple of things that dissatisfy me about it. Firstly, I didn’t get to do much drawing in this assignment. I did sneak a bit in on the covers and front pages, but I would have liked to do more drawing. 

Secondly, I would have liked to be working on something new, rather than reworking a theme using collages I’ve made previously. I chose to do this because I’ve done so much on self portraits in the past - what’s here is only a portion of what I’ve created over the years. It seems like self portraits are the first assignment on every creative course I’ve done! 

On the more positive side, working with these images in a new way has opened up new explorations in terms of how to group them and the use of the bubble wrap as self protection. That in particular feels new. Also to name and write something about each part is not something I’ve done before. Changing the form and medium has opened new options, and that seems like a useful thing to learn.