This started life as an MA course final project, looking at a common, standard grid system and its relationship to the printed, hardbound book. In other words, the project was to treat the book as an agent in the storytelling, not just as a way to bind illustrations together.

I was taught the rudiments of bookbinding at the London College of Communication, and each book as end-product would be handmade by myself.

A comic strip grid is actually two grids, laid on top of each other: a 3 x 3 track and a 4 x 4. On a page-by-page basis, the artist usually picks one of the two, and the reader follows the story left to right, top to bottom.

If we look closely at the grid however, we can see that there are a good number of grid areas that traditionally get completely overlooked in terms of pacing and tension. I could choose to fill the whole page with a single drawing, or just one small rectangle. I could define rhomboid panels within the grid, or overlapping grid areas.

Thus I can legitimately use the whole page and spread as tool for driving the story, over and above simply chugging the reader along linearly.

What makes the end result an artist’s book, not just an unconventional comic, is that I can also choose what to bind together as a book. I can choose the paper stocks, and the trim of each spread:

• Some pages can be on transparent (tracing) paper, which will change the reading in both directions as we turn a leaf: what we see will be layered ahead and behind, to point at how our perception of past and future can — and does — change.
• I can trim pages so that turning a leaf only partially exposes the spread either side. This means that the linear reading of the panels will be broken, and that the reader is forced to reconsider (or re-read) a spread several times as different information is presented.
• In my mockup (below) I bound a thin, mini-strip into the centre of the book, so there was an unavoidable subplot literally stitched in to it.

In this project then, I am looking at the rhythmic possibilities of:

• Selectively using only specific grid areas (individual boxes) on a page.
  The implication here is that there’s a lot of whitespace: I don’t aim to fill the whole picture area
• Recognising margins as part of the canvas.
• Contrasting spreads.
  Still selectively using specific grid areas, but looking at how the facing page responds. The composition is itself aiding storytelling
• looking at the lines and shapes in a page and spread, then developing that as a theme on the next page.
• Setting up compositional rhythms that only “pay off” or complete further along the book.

Art prints

It’s an important part of the whole project that each, individual page (and even panel) stands up as a work in its own right. Irrespective of what a page bridges as a leaf in a book, it’s internal narrative should still be alive when experienced separately.

It’s an important part of the whole project that each, individual page (and even panel) stands up as a work in its own right. Irrespective of what a page bridges as a leaf in a book, it’s internal narrative should still be alive when experienced separately.

In progress

Although these drawings appear practically finished, my plan is to gather the individual pages together, move them around, and faux-collate them as a nominal book. This is a step on from the previous mockup, where the drawing is very close to a end-product. At this point I will be able to see what opportunities might have been overlooked by creating them separately. If necessary pieces can be redrawn to work together.

In the pairing below, we see exactly the same landscape, but merely adding columns forces us to infer the passage of time. In the unfinished piece I’m working out the figure placement: even within a single page, every panel should stand up as a work in it’s own right.