Accordion Books
These easy-to-make books make great gifts. They take a variety of forms and serve different functions.
Flag Accordions
I frequently make one of these flag books to carry along when travelling. I paste the business cards of people I meet on one side and write a brief description of how/when I met them on the reverse side.
Pocket Accordions
These are useful for collecting photos, recipes, and other sorts of memorabilia. I generally make one or two to take along on travels to collect people’s business cards and to store my own cards for exchanges.
Star Accordions
I use these as mini-photo albums, but I’ve also filled them with poetry.
Here’s what Star Accordions look like when folded back on themselves to form stars:
Japanese Fan Style Accordions
Japanese style accordions are books whose pages unfold like fans; that is, a long sheet of paper is folded in and out upon itself and is anchored to hard or a soft covers on either end. These books incorporate the folds you would need to make in order to produce a classic Japanese fan (i.e. accordion or fan folds), but they are not in and of themselves fan-shaped because they are achored at two points, rather than one. Basically, they look like this:
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Below I’ve included some illustrated pages from two of my Japanese fan accordion books, one entitled Power Shirts, the other Life Drawing. The folded versions of each are below.
Power Shirts
Power Shirts is a collection of drawings of the tunics indigenous peoples wear for protection or potency. They are believed to have magical properties that can ward off harm in battle, increase accuracy in the hunt, or facilitate contact with the supernatural.
Life Drawing
Life Drawing includes sketches made at a Life Drawing group I participate in. The group meets twice a month, once with a clothed model, once with nudes. Most of the art in Life Drawing is done in acrylic ink, a medium I am just beginning to understand.
30 Second Gesture Drawing
Obviously I didn’t make the series of gesture drawings in 30 seconds. The originals were made in thirty seconds and then reworked as a composite. Gesture drawing is primarily about line and directionality, so the sketches made in class are very much more primitive than the ones shown. I’ve tried to retain the “flatness” and animation of a gesture drawing, even though I’ve buffed them up to make them more interesting.
