About a six months ago, I made a harmonograph and started making my harmonograph art which I’ve been calling ‘Harmonographics‘ If you don’t know what a harmonograph is, then read this Wikipedia article about harmonographs. I actually made two harmonographs – one has two pendulums (rotary and lateral) and the other has three pendulums (rotary and two laterals).
Wow, I just wrote Harmonograph or some variant 7 times.
Moving on. In my process of watercolor painting and understanding how to create different patterns using my harmonograph, I created about a hundred different harmonographic designs. You can see some of them here, but the majority of them live in a box under my bed and on my laptop.
Around this time, I also started developing a deep interest in bookbinding which is a dying art with the rise of e-books. (Just as a disclaimer: I have NO issue with e-books. I know this can be a point of contention with literature buffs) In the process of teaching myself bookbinding, I learned about pH neutral glue, the benefits of using a bone folder versus my thumb, coptic stitching techniques and how to make a hard cover.
So, after collecting my materials and tools I made my first book! A sketchbook.
Pretty cool, huh? Scott and I use this book to jot down our ideas and draw weird things. Here’s a page we drew a few days ago. My drawing is on the right and Scott’s is on the left.
Although this was a fun little project, I wanted to learn more about making a bigger and sturdier book to collect all the harmonographic designs that I was proud of.
This was my first large scale book layout job, so after multiple rounds of scanning and digitally laying out the harmonographics, I created my first printed book! Stitched and all.
Here’s an image of the book before I stitched and glued it together.
I initially made this book for myself to flip through the designs that I created but recently I’ve been giving thought to embarking on a public art journey to release these designs into the world.
I’ve got to work on a game plan and will write about it in a future post. Stay tuned!