Mark-making & Pop-up Books

Today's morning workshop was an opportunity to experiment with mark-making, ahead of a screen-printing activity that will happen when we are back in the studio.

I used masking tape to create a neat grid, then used black acrylic paint and a range of materials to create marks. Materials I experimented with included pasta shapes, leaves, string and sticks. My favourite materials to create marks with were the toothbrush and the sponge as they provided a good variety.

The afternoon workshop was about creating pop-up books. We were shown a range of examples of how the folded pop-up technique had been used, such as to create faces or 3D scenes with buildings. They can also be used to create flaps that can hide text, or allow the reader to see the previous page for whatever reason. The pop-up technique is known for it's prominence in children's books, but also can feature in greetings cards and complex paper craft.

In response to this, I experimented with creating a concept of a scene from a hypothetical children's book. The pop-up technique is employed to make the city pop-out to emphasise the sense of place, and to allow the reader a glimpse of the treasures underneath. 

It's a rough concept, and could be improved by using sturdier paper to allow a more polished pop-up, and made more complex by cutting out the windows to emphasise the 'glimpse into something hidden' idea.