Galena Design Center and Dubuque Book Arts presents a weekend workshop.

April 28 & 29, 2012

"Travel Journals : Sketching & Hand-Made Books" Location: Galena, Illinois and Dubuque, Iowa

This two-day weekend workshop will be held over the weekend of April 28 & 29, 2012

Limited to six participants, $145 includes materials ($50 deposit will hold your place) 

Overnight lodging is available in numerous lovely small hotels and B&Bs in the Galena/Dubuque region.

Please see http://galena.org and http://www.traveldubuque.com/

 Come visit the beautiful Driftless region around Galena (NW Illinois) and Dubuque (NE Iowa) for a weekend workshop with Peter Fraterdeus and Alice McMahon. 

This workshop combines basic non-adhesive bookbinding techniques — leading up to making a simple four-signature journal with a folded paper cover — with taking our new sketch journals into the field to make sketches of the local built and natural environments in a journal format. 

Non-adhesive books are made without glue, and require no special equipment. Covers are made with folded and tabbed heavy paper, using principles discovered in 13th Century "limp vellum" bindings. Peter will show examples from his collection of antiquarian, contemporary and handmade books. 

No bookbinding experience required. Some familiarity with paper folding and drawing tools preferred, but not required. Drawing experience helpful but not required.

Travel Sketching Journals have a long history, long before the days of picture postcards or digital cameras. Today, they provide a record of a journey, and an opportunity to heighten our skills of observation. Travel sketches are both mnemonic and illustrative, whether quick or studied, they need not be more than a few lines and smudges, or may be as closely observed as a fine drawing. (Traveling not required, of course, the journal can be used for any kind of drawing or writing!)

PETER FRATERDEUS has taught letterpress printing, calligraphy, book structures and digital typography in a number of venues, both in the US and Europe, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College's Center for Book and Paper Art. He is the owner/proprietor of Slow Print in Dubuque, an award-winning 'high-touch' 21st Century letterpress printing studio. In the 1981, he received a National Endowment for the Arts apprenticeship grant to study calligraphy and letter carving with Ieuan Rees in Wales, and in 1986, received an NEA Design Projects grant for his first digital typeface, "Prospera". Peter is a self-professed paper junkie. http://slowprint.com 

ALICE MCMAHON is an internationally exhibited figurative artist, specializing in pastel portraits and charcoal magic realist drawings in large formats. Her work has been shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London and featured in American Artist magazine. She is currently represented by the 33 Contemporary Gallery in Chicago. Recent work includes a 30"x50" drawing on MDF board being shown by invitation at the 2011 Voices Art Gallery Exhibit in Dubuque's Historic Warehouse District. http://alicemcmahon.com

Please fill out our Community Survey as we hone our course descriptions!

Also please follow us on Twitter and Facebook (links to SlowPrint's pages where we'll post news about Dubuque Book Arts events)

Throughout the year:
Typography for Artists and Others  - Peter Fraterdeus and Kristine Jubeck (Weds evenings 7-9 once a month)
    Learn to arrange language and information based on typographic contrast, form, color and structural principles. Use common word processing and simple page layout programs and their stylesheets. For artists, administrators and anyone needing a better sense of how to use visual language to write grants, design logos, flyers, posters and signs, and even make better websites.

May-June Dates to be determined.
Non-Adhesive Bindings and Plein Aire Drawing: A weekend workshop (Saturday & Sunday 11-5) combining
    Making Books without Glue - Peter Fraterdeus
    Learn to make your own Journal or Sketchbook with a simple non-adhesive binding based on 13th Century book structures
    Drawing the River - Alice McMahon
    Take your new sketchbook out to the Mississippi bluffs for a day of drawing (picnic lunch)

Get out of the house with a brand new sketchbook!

Two-day workshop at Slow Print Letterpress Studio (Dubuque)

Non-Adhesive Bindings are modern adaptations of millennium-old techniques to transform loose sheets of paper into lovely, high-touch books with nothing but needle, thread and a sharp knife. No glues or adhesives needed!

We'll produce three book types, simple pamphlet style, single-sheet accordion, and  multiple-signature sewn onto a folded cover.

The first day is focused on exploring the many possible structures of the book; folding, tearing, cutting and sewing papers, and finally creating a finished sketchbook from large sheets of fine art drawing paper. The binding section is taught by Slow Print founder Peter Fraterdeus.

Our second day will be in the countryside along the beautiful bluffs of the Mississippi River near Dubuque, for a day of sketching with charcoal and pencil with your new sketchbooks! Alice McMahon, an internationally known painter and charcoal artist, will provide critique and pointers on technique.

June - July
Calligraphic Adventures with Peter Fraterdeus - (Two Saturdays 11-5)
    Beginners through advanced calligraphers welcome as we play with the tools that humans have created to write and draw letters. Inks, watercolors, brushes, quills, steel, felt and roller pens-everybody out of the toolbox! We'll work with different types of paper, and learn how to see letters in a whole new way. Get away from the computer and feel the scratch of a real quill on handmade paper!

August-September
Wood Type Wonderland  - Peter Fraterdeus and Kristine Jubeck - (Saturday & Sunday 11-5)
    Join Peter and Kristine for an adventure in Wood Type on the Vandercook 219 Cylinder press. Extremely limited enrollment, this class at Slow Print Letterpress will be offered to a maximum of four students at a time. We will learn to design in real time with Slow Print's collection of antique wood type, and investigate the graphical and linguistic power of these wonderful old letterforms. Get away from the computer and smell the ink!

Download the Class Notes (3.0mb PDF)

Introduction: Modes of Perception

The Right Brain or R-mode provides the 'negative' space against which thought (Left Brain or L-mode) marks time,  sequence and order. This is the quiet space, the empty vessel which holds the mind, yet is the mind. It is the complementary, the ground on which the figure plays, yet is also primary, for without it, thought itself could not exist, nor could we perceive form without its context.
We can think of L-mode as Logical and Linear,  while R-mode is Reflective, Receptive — spacial and immediate.
Meditation, Music, Art, Sex, Exhaustion, Trauma, 'Psychoactives' — all are paths to R-mode awareness, yet it's fleeting.
Betty Edwards, as with all good Zen teachers, developed practices designed to quiet – really to bore or stun – the chattering, 'rational,' sequential, symbolic mind, allowing the intuitive perceptual mind to come forward. The conscious recognition of entering R-mode is as a light turning on!
In fact, enlightenment is a term used for the attainment of that continuous conscious state, when both R & L modes are fully engaged! Drawing (letterforms) is as good a practice as any!
Our approach will be to inform the 'rational' mind, but to prefer the pattern-recognizing, synthesizing, relationship-appreciating mode of the 'empty' mind, which takes what the eye offers without judgement, in order to see 'negative' space as something real and substantial. To perceive the substance of emptiness.

Day One — Drawing on Emptiness

What do you see?

Practicum : Day One

Drawing as a physical activity, making deliberate marks and expressive marks

Paper Bag Studies :The haptic sense — feeling our way to spatial relationships,

haptic : of or relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception (awareness of the position of the body and its parts)

Viewfinder studies with the Oak Leaf; of a Wood Type Letter
Heuristic Studies of rules and patterns in letterform construction

heuristic : enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves : a “hands-on” or interactive heuristic approach to learning.

Jonathon Hoefler's exercise in 'tweening' forms between the 'known' letters

Sketching and refinement, iterative process in the "Letters Mingle Souls" design

Mac demo?

Finish Day One with a review of progress and perspectives.

Betty Edwards: Strategies for Perception, Saturation

Perceive the Edges

Perceive the Negative Spaces

Perceive the Relationships and Proportions

Perceive the Lights and Shadows

Perceive the Gestalt – The Thingness of the Thing.

Edge is a shared boundary - Liminal Study of edges, boundaries - Scribble / string studies

Pure Contour Drawing, five minutes of the wrinkles in the hand. Toning the paper w/graphite

Sighting has to do with constants: Reason, Ratios and Relationships

St. Thomas Aquinas:

The requirements for Beauty – Integritas, Consonantia, Quidditas

(Wholeness, Harmony & Essense)

Seeing and drawing

What is the hardest letter to draw? To see?
Which is harder, drawing or seeing?
Haptic (touch, fasten) perception of negative space. [Wood Type Exercise Large – Small ]
Heuristic (self-discovered) perception of shape & space [Non-Alphabetic Symbols (Jon. Hoefler’s exercises)]
Drawing for Design – Progressive Refinement, Iterative Process [pin-marks for registration, overlay]
Using the computer for refinement – Hidden sources of problems, kinks in curves, vector entrance & exit

Day 2 — Applied Perceptions of Space

Practicum : Day Two

Putting “flesh on the bones” or “wrapping the stone”?

Watercolor Postcards

Calligraphic Writing

Letterform Design

Ann Hechle’s Aspects of Language : Sound panel, etc.

Platonic Ideals enter the Material World

The Eye, the Mind, the Hand, the Heart.

Bibliography

The best bet for finding these books is online. Try searching for the ISBN number at abe.com or amazon.com

Books

Betty Edwards
    Drawing on the Artist Within: A Guide to Innovation, Invention, Imagination and Creativity
        (Simon & Schuster ISBN: 0671493868 / 0-671-49386-8)
    Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (ISBN: 0874770882 / 0-87477-088-2)
    Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors
        (ISBN: 1585422193 / 1-58542-219-3)
Nicolette Grey
    Lettering as Drawing ISBN 0800847296
Micheal Harvey
    Creative Lettering : Drawing and Design ISBN 0-8008-1997-7 (Taplinger)

Websites

Ann Hechle
   http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/csc/hechle/essay.html
Peter Fraterdeus
   http://fraterdeus.com/lettering
   http://semiotx.com/
   This document: http://slowprint.com/dbqba/accentuate/
Ieuan Rees
   http://www.ieuanreeslettering.co.uk/
Lao Tzu – Tao te Ching
    http://www.terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html
Jonathon Hoefler – Introduction to Typeface Design 110
   http://typophile.com/courses/

Supply List

This is a list of important tools and materials. Most will be in your toolbox already.
Pencils, soft, medium and hard ie: 3B HB 2H 4H
Technical Drawing Pens  size 0 or 00 (.35 or .30 mm) (the higher priced refillable pens can be used with subtle colors...) with appropriate inks. Watercolor inks (light-blue, purple) for refillable pens. Black waterproof fiber pens
    Rapidograph or Mars pens or equivalent high-qualityfiber tipped like Zig Millenium)
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/staedtler-mars-technical-drawing-pen-set/
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/koh-i-noor-rapidosketch-pen-set/
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/artline-drawing-pens/ (fiber)
Long-hair sable 'pencils' (lettering brushes) # 3, #5
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/winsor-and-newton-sceptre-gold-designer-round-series-202/
"one-stroke" flat lettering brush 1/2 inch
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/robert-simmons-white-sable-one-stroke-series-721/
kneaded rubber eraser & white plastic eraser (Mars, etc)
paper: 11x14 (or larger) pad drafting vellum (18x24 can be divided to 12x18 which is fine)
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/bienfang-graphics-360-marker-paper/
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/clearprint-1000h-drafting-vellum/
paper: cold-press watercolor  block 6x9
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/canson-montval-watercolor-blocks/
drafting tape : http://www.dickblick.com/products/drafting-tape/
watercolors,  travel/pan set & small watercolor palette & small squat bottle for rinsing brushes, etc
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/raphael-watercolor-travel-set/
    http://www.dickblick.com/products/winsor-and-newton-cotman-watercolor-pan-sets
magnifier for looking at small stuff up close
Xacto or single-edge razor blades for sharpening pencils (no 'pencil sharpeners' please!)
12" 30-60-90 drafting triangle & small t-square, drafting board, etc
12-18 inches of white packing twine / nylon cord
MacBook (or whatever, ok! :-) with Adobe Illustrator and Wacom drawing tablet
Aviary.com account : this web-based graphics tool application may be VERY useful to those who don't have access to Adobe's professional tools). Sign up for a free account and check it out...
Also, Inkscape, an open-source vector drawing tool. 

Of course, there’s nothing like the real thing. If you’re doing serious or professional work, Adobe Illustrator is de rigueur.