Inktober

3) Creating and printing an independent book (~2 Days)

I used my Inktober drawings (spanning the month of October where you challenge yourself to make an ink drawing daily) to create a book as some of my friends and family were interested in purchasing my drawings.

Because I had not planned on making them into a printed piece, all my drawings were different sizes and shapes so I decided on making a square book as I would be able to fit all the pieces in this shape rather than portrait or landscape only. After resizing all my pieces, I compiled them in Photoshop and, with some help, learnt how to use groups to organise them into the correct page order. Learning how to use groups to layout pages and order has been invaluable in laying out spreads for other publications I have made since, although I do need to practice my skills using InDesign which I know is used by companies to plan page layout and printing from my experience working at the Oxford University Press. I printed the books using the MFD Printer in the studio and onto cartridge paper before adding a yellow paper cover.

I am very pleased with my books as they showcase my work well and are visually appealing. However, I realised later that the cover should be made out of a thicker, more protective paper as the yellow paper is very thin and gets bent or torn easily. I will consider this when making books in the future. I then printed a few more copies to sell  but replaced the thin yellow cover with a slightly more substantial marbled newsprint paper (made by myself) which looks much better visually and feels better too. In the future I may also change the paper stock I use or the binding method as trying to staple through the cartridge paper was difficult. This self-initiated project was a good experience with a clear outcome which was very satisfying as it provided an item I could then sell at fairs. 

It is definitely a project I will attempt next year but with some changes; I learned from looking at other artists' Inktobers that if you keep the image to line-art only, it can easily be coloured digitally later and by keeping to a black/white image, editing values will also produce a cleaner, more consistent image throughout. The time management skills I have learnt in keeping myself to a schedule will also be useful in managing myself in future projects.