In college for my final A Level project, I studied paleontology and archeology, as animals are my favorite thing to draw, but the history and science behind it really intrigued me, so after studying animals and mythological creatures at University, I decided my big book of drawings would not only be a project fitting to the final brief but a personal one. I chose big cats, and on the first page compared the anatomy of a skull belonging to a modern day big cat to their glacial period (Ice age) counterpart, the cat known as Smilodon Fatalis (Saber toothed Tiger) that walked the deserts and marsh land of California from 1.6 Million to 10,000 years ago. After this page, I moved on to how different the breeds of certain big cats are, yet all belonging to the family; Felidae, I studied the African Lion, Bengal Tiger, Cheetah, the Jaguar and Sunda Clouded Leopard. With not being able to provide a narrative, or extensive facts about each big cat I jotted down only their Latin Names, which all connects them to what I previously mentioned; The family Felidae.
I looked at how to bind books, choosing only to look at old books only because the start of my topic is over a million years old, I wanted my book to have a worn and aged feel to it. Old books where traditionally stitched together and as you can see my well read copy of 20,000 leagues under the sea is almost thread bare. I searched my grandfathers book shelf for vintage books with this method of binding, and on each the spine was loose. I don't know if this is from age or that the method isn't a very good one so I moved on with my search.
Here's some search results of mine from book binding research.
http://www.wikihow.com/Bind-a-Book
http://lifehacker.com/5867554/how-to-make-print-and-bind-your-own-books
In the end I decided to go it alone, and see what I could come up with...
To create my book, I chopped up an old cardboard box, folding it into a book shape, and painted the inside a burnt umber, needing 2 to 3 coats of paint so it didn't look like a lazy job, yet sadly the paint didn't take as nicely to the card board as I was hoping.
I punched holes in the spine of my 'book' with screws, threading the wool I would use to hold my pages in place through them, and gluing them to the outer side of the book, where no one would see them, as by now my idea had changed as to how I wanted my book to look and that was wild, just like the animals I was studying. So to cover the wool thread, I bound my book in this very stylish Leopard print fabric, using white craft glue.
I had already drawn out the images, for the inside of my book, on seperate pages, leaving opposite sides blank, so I could glue them together without defacing my work. I ripped the edges of the work, not caring for little tares in the paper as my book is wild. Finally I scored rough holes in the sides of my drawings, threading the wool through and creating a knot above the first page, so everything was secure. Nothing is tidy about my book, no clean cuts and I am happy with the outcome because I think my book gives off a free feeling, the color scheme is very natural, with only small hints of bright colors. I chose not to stick one medium, just as the natural world has not chosen to stick to one thread of DNA and has stitched an absolutely beautiful history and diversity of species and breeds.
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