Book Art: Expansion Expression as the Scorpion
I’ve self-bound the first four books of the series. It was a fun, creative process in which I learned about book-binding and experimented with different mediums. After the first four were done, I took a pause…why…well, I was busy so that was part of it.
But it was also because I was debating on how to experiment further with making creative, artistic copies of the Primordial Essences Saga books. They concern four iconic artifacts…four artifacts that I wanted to model for this purpose. But I also wanted to use the book itself in some primal way.
Which led me to this semi-insane idea:
Paper mache book art.
As in, I printed out Expansion Expression and turned it into the Scorpion, the Essence of Expansion, itself via paper mache.
It has been ages since I had ever done paper mache so I had some help and guidance. It went well with such help.
It went well, but it was still a messy, slow process. We mixed flour and water to be the ‘sticky’ to adhere the paper together. The scorpion was built up around a ‘skeleton’ frame. We had to let it dry over a few days before adding the final layer. We ‘cooked’ it in the oven at a low temperature to help the drying process.
After it was sufficiently dried, we glued on the final layers, the text that I wanted to showcase. Quotes that I liked that, quotes that stood out to me, and quotes that were symmetric to be used for the claws.
Here’s what it turned out to be:
It’s truly an expression of the book, like a physical montage. I was flipping through pages trying to find good excerpts…and it just made me so happy to see these snippets again. I felt the flashes of the book’s scenes play through my Neraq. It was like I was reliving it.
I’m going to be doing Containment Collapse the same way for sure. As for TMOL/TCOD…still thinking. But this was a very successful project/experiment that I want to build off of with subsequent book art projects.
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