I have been slowly working on my tree book and got a few more pages completed. You can read about the beginnings if you missed it here and here.

I start with pages from the old tree book that have been gessoed and then painted or dyed. I used walnut ink on most of the pages but I decided I would try the tumeric ink we made a couple of years ago. That was so bright yellow, I added a layer of walnut ink and it is still candescent. I will have to cover up most of the yellow so I don’t overwhelm the book with so much yellow. I have a pile of painted papers and some of the mark making we have been doing over the last 3-4 months.

Then I move bits around until I am happy with the outcome. You can see that I tried adding my little landscapes that I painted recently but I didn’t end up using them. They didn’t feel right to me, most likely because of the very white borders.

Here’s one of the pages before I glued things down. The yellow and black paper are shreds left over from our paper layering experiments.

Here’s a finished page spread. You can see the same paper layering end product on the right. This is the candescent yellow background page. It has been toned down by layering tissue paper over it.

Here’s one that I used one of Paula’s eco prints on the right. It was perfect for my color scheme. The left reminds me of a feather but it is torn paper that accidentally turned out that shape.

Here’s another layered paper one with some other off cuts and mark making.

And here’s the layout I showed you above once it was glued. I like how the tissue paper allows you to see through to the original book page. I am enjoying the imprecise nature of this book and playing with mark making, color and shapes.