A day in the studio

In quest of the much-needed paper punch, which has spent years in a desk drawer but has inexplicably disappeared from that spot, I started the studio day by turning out a few drawers, discarding a few things, rearranging, adding labels ... which used up half the morning - and still no paper punch ...

However it did turn up, in a box that has sat for months in plain view on the shelf above the work table. Also in that box were the other bookbinding tools I've been looking for for some weeks, off and on (mostly off).

On with the work - mixing pale and neutral colours and painting papers -

 Lots of neutrals. What for? to simulate paint charts -

My somewhat complicated idea is to do a riff on Farrow & Ball paint charts, using much the same sequence of colours, neutrals first, then reds, etc - and their "names" will be the headwords on the painted dictionary pages. This will involve finding 48 colours, mixing to match the colour on the appropriate dictionary page, painting paper, cutting strips and gluing them on the "chart", which will have been printed with the colour names, ie the headwords, eg mien - militia (as on the beige page above). On the back, emulating F&B's explications of paint colours, will be definitions of these headwords, arranged alphabetically; the definitions will come from the red dictionary, Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (no publication date), which belonged to Phyllis C. Banks, who got it in October 1924. (The dictionary of the same title, which I painted, was published in 1983.)

I feel quite daunted by this plan; writing it down helps, and so does my stash of papers painted with leftover paints, which has yielded a few strips -

Only 36 more colours to find! As well as finding word definitions (48x2 of them), and laying the whole thing out in Indesign for printing. It's doable in the time available, but I'm not thinking yet of the cutting of strips and the gluing into place. Or wondering whether this book-object will have any appeal. It's already come a long way during a day of actually starting to make it - I've figured out how to choose the pages and colours, and reconciled myself to having to paint lots of paper (for the strips), and made the decision to use 48 colours (eight panels) instead of just the four panels.