Turning a Barn into a Book

            Although I knew going into this class that it would require an art lab and include both English and the arts in some way, for some reason, I’m still surprised by how creative the class could truly be. I don’t know why, but when I was told we would be making books, my brain pictured paper-back and hard bound novels, the standard book that you’d see on a shelf in a Barnes and Nobles; I never imagined that I’d have the opportunity to create a book that both feels like a book while looking like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The accordion book project we’ve been working on for the last few weeks fits this idea, since the project appeared to be more of a piece of artwork that I helped to design rather than something someone would pick up to read (of course, you can read the book I created, but not in the same way I’d previously thought). 

The book as a whole turned out much better than I thought it would, but it’s not without its flaws. It’s a small thing, which is all right, as the content is fitting for its size; any bigger and I don’t think I’d know what else to put in it. Inside, alongside a picture of each of the horses is their height, name, breed, age, and a drawing used to hopefully capture a bit of their personality. 

Though I liked how the sketches turned out, after coloring them, I felt that a few of them were a bit difficult to distinguish, namely the darker colored ones. I believed it happened in part because of the paper and the color pencils I was using. I used charcoal paper, not really thinking much of it, but the paper isn’t really meant for colored pencils, especially the ones I used; it doesn’t help either that I pressed down hard with a lot of the darker colors to get the color to show, pressing more pigment onto the page and making more of a blob. Next time, I’ll just have to be more careful. 

Some of the pages could’ve looked better if I’d done a little pre-planning beforehand, like what I did with Odie’s page, but besides the few mistakes here and there, I am happy with the overall product. It’s not perfect, but that’s all right, since I already know how to fix it next time.