Book du jour - sea whispers

the tide, the beach

the stones pulled in and out

the sound of the stones in the water

you dream of the waves, of the sound of stones

you dream of a huge book, of the movement and sound of turning pages

you roll from side to side, hearing the sound of stones

you becomes the stones, the book

"Seawhispers" is a response to my dream, to finding myself rolling from side to side as I turned the pages of the huge book in the dream - waking to find myself entangled in the bedclothes.

I wanted something swishy - large swishy sheets of paper - and there on the studio floor were some sheets of brown tissue paper, intended for screenprinting.

I used a line of ink for the horizon - never mind that it spread very quickly, and looked more like trees on a riverside than the sea meeting the sky. After sprinkling some more ink on the "land" and throwing salt water at the "sky" (to leave faint white marks) it seemed that the white marks would be too faint, so I mixed up a little white gouache and threw that at the sky.

Out came the wax pot and the sheets got coated. Here's one laid out on newsprint - layers & layers of newsprint - for the wax removal (bonus result: a lot of nice waxed paper to use elsehow) -
The effect is best against the light -
I'd added more ink, diluted to varying degrees, to come to rest in the areas that missed waxing, but on noticing that one section had torn and was on the point of disintegrating completely, my plan for big floppy pages had to change -
By folding them and using the wax to "glue" the pages together, a book eventually appeared. It was quite tricky to line up the spines, keep some pages separate and others together. And getting the tissue (an unwaxed afterthought) cover to stick to the pages still hasn't been entirely resolved (click on picture to see it larger) -
One of my favourite pages -
Perhaps just the faint white salt-rings would have been enough -- I didn't know then that unwaxed areas would become "clouds" too.

It needs a case - a project for tomorrow perhaps.