Above: Sketch in a waiting room made in my blue journal used in November 2012. An 8 x 8 inch journal I made with Magnani Pescia light blue—which is a lovely robin's egg blue. The sketch was made with a Staedtler Pigment Liner. Click on the image to view an enlargement.
I cut my finger the other day. It was my own fault. Let my attention wander. (Don't do that!) Since typing is slow going I thought I'd still put up an image. The one I put up is from this blue-toned paper journal. I was just getting ready to make more journals like this and now I'll have to wait until the finger heals.
In the meantime I'm dreaming about all the fun I'll have when I can get back to binding more books and sketching on this delicious paper.
I love this printmaking paper for working on with the Staedtler Pigment LIner, Stabilo Tones (here's one of my favorites of a toucan on this paper), gouache, and even pencil. In fact I want to make another one of these books because I have a pencil sketching project I want to start.
The book pictured above is a casebound book where the text pages are sewn together as a textblock and that's one problem with this paper—even if you are extra special careful with gluing the glue seams between signatures they will still pull apart with very little page turning action, because the paper is very soft on the surface and it just pulls apart in those areas.
But the color of this paper, and the texture and versatility make using this paper worth it. You can support your glue seams as you work through your book as I show you in this video. Or you can sew your signatures directly to the spine to avoid that issue all together (the toucan is in a sewn-on-the-spine book).
And it is the most delightful blue you can imagine. So I'll keep dreaming about it until I can make some more books.
