Dear Everyone ~
My next Bookful collaboration with artist, author and dear friend Cat Bennett has moved to the front burner. Our four-Saturday workshop series, Gourmet Bookful of Edible Delights, will zoom to screens everywhere next month, debuting on September 11.
September is a month brimming with so many delicious, voluptuous, and colourful fruits & vegetables. They inspire drawing as much as cooking. Recipes have a particular connection to people we love, to cherished dishes that warm our heart and feed our soul.
The book structure you will learn to make in this series is a landscape accordion book with a drop-spine hardcover. Your accordion panels will each measure 6 x 8¾ (so each spread is 6 x 17½), for a total length of 218¾ inches! This lovely style of book will lay perfectly flat whilst you are illustrating your favourite foods & recipes. The structure also allows your pages to spring up & out for display.
Cat will lead the group through a bountiful buffet of drawing and painting techniques in some of her favourite mediums: opaque watercolour, coloured pencils, and marker pens. Each two-panel spread will feature a recipe and a companion illustration. With some tips from Cat, we’ll hand-letter our recipes, and you will have created a delicious book of delectable edibles. (Absolutely no previous drawing experience is required.)
As Everyone knows, I take particular joy in selecting (and packaging) the kit of materials for each workshop. For Gourmet Bookful, I’ve decided to raise the “lusciousness bar” (not an Olympic event) and share a remarkable array of papers and fabrics that I’ve collected from various sources over the years. My reserves of these are very limited, and I’m excited at the prospect of sending them out into the creative world to become beautiful book covers. Students will be able to choose from one of three palettes, and I will select the specific paper patterns and bookcloths in each kit. As always, if you’d like to order additional kits, you can.
The Berriest Blue palette includes geometric Katazome’s (from Aiko’s, acquired during the First Zaki Dynasty) and blossoming chiyogami. The spine fabrics are so beautiful, you’ll wish you could wear them. And, of course, the fabrics take on the cast of the paper they are next to.
The Très Rosé palette includes Japanese mountain landscapes, magenta mums, and pale pink cherry blossoms. The spine fabrics are brighter and deeper: wine and jewel tones.
The Golden Toasts are appropriately mouth-watering, from mango-cinnamon to saffron, from mustard seed to turmeric. And an entire cortege of British country characters, illustrated by Harold Jones. The bookcloths in all three palettes are paragons of texture and tone: silky smooth to iridescent to two-tone.
In closing, we both want to emphasize that no previous art or bookbinding experience is needed to fully enjoy the workshop. The pace & camaraderie is very zen. Plus you’ll have the videos to watch and rewatch to taste.
We look forward to seeing you in September!
Gourmet Bookful of Edible Delights via Zoom
Bon Appétit, Bari