Gripping Grids

Staying with LJ and swaps with Tess, (by which I mean not gifts but collaborative work, usually two of us taking turns to work in two books three times each, so mine would be worked by me-Tess-me-Tess-me-Tess then returned to me to keep,) the latest has turned into a mind-boggling geometric gymnastics.

We took four pieces of paper 20cm*20cm, folded them three times, (horizontal, vertical, and one diagonal,) and glued them together to create a book of sorts. We both experimented with different sizes, number of sections, and especially orientation for gluing.

Had I been a forest person I might have had some inkling, but because I am so a tree person, I naively imagined working in, oh, eight 20cm*20cm squares. (I'm calling the outside center of the page Corner A just in case you feel compelled to experiment yourself and/or to fully understand my gibberish.)

Wrong!

For my book now travelling to Scotland, I glued the sections with Corner A positioned at top left, bottom left, top left and bottom left. Sampling told me this would give me the first page opening up, then down, then up, and down again. It turns out, (pun intended,) there is no real up and down because this depends on how I hold the book. And if you are confused, don't worry because this is not the important part.

If you glue the sections together with all Corner As on the left or the right side, regardless of top/bottom, the book has a spine/out-side and a fore-edge/in-side. And while the inside or the side towards me has as many independent square pages as the number of sections, (so, four in my swap book,) [Important Part Alert] all of the outside pages are interrelated.

(If you mix placing Corner As on left and right sides, you have pages opening on both outside and inside. If you can cope, you could potentially make two contents in one physical book. If you're like me, you would almost tear the sample/book trying to figure out how the pages open!)

I used pens on the outside pages and watercolor on the inside pages in my swap book.

If I draw one design in one whole outside page, a quarter or two diagonal quarters become/s part/s of another outside page. And that threw me. I first worked on the first outside page, or what most resembles a front cover in Western-language book. I doodled a grid in, (and here my English gets super dodgy,) rotational symmetry in quadrants, i.e. identical but turned 90 degrees. The whole page looks the same regardless of which side is on the left/top/right/bottom. Then I opened another outside page, and heck! (Sorry for the super low-res pics, I used them just to communicate with Tess, but you get the gist.)

From there on working on four outside pages was like picking a lint off your sweater only to realize you're unravelling the whole garment, only in this case it was piling up and cramming in lines in a way so not according to my plan.

This is probably not going to tie in with my weaving, but it's been gripping; I see a few mini books with lots of lines in my future.

I also found this photo in my camera; a different journal swap with Tess, it's an A2 sheet folded "zine" style in six sections, 12 pages. With the yellows and greens, I was looking for blue pieces of painted paper to unify it, when I saw oh-so-many "Fire and Fury" paper, and used one. Very unlikely color combination for me, but I do like it. This might show up in a weaving some day.