A concertina sketchbook is an accordion style unfolding continuous page (I’m using this one and like it). In this previous post, you saw the first stages when I blitzed it with a variety of black and white mark making. Since then, I have been adding color, leaving it open on my desk, and jumping down this rabbit hole every once in a while.  I’ve been having a lot of fun with this!  In this post, I show you some four page spreads and then give you closer details to see better what is going on.

In the last two photos you can see a couple exercises I gave myself that you can do too. In one, I made a small (2″x3″) photocopy of a one of my larger paintings and then, after gluing it down, extended it. (See the pointillist photo, second to last. Look carefully and you can see the edges of the original work that I expanded.)

In another, I set up a bunch of colors and I did the flowers willy nilly with my eyes shut. Then I cleaned them up a bit with a background and a vase, adding a tablecloth made of a photocopy of an old painting of mine onto packing labels. The black and white will tie in with some other black and white areas on previous pages.

The continuous page morphs and in the end will include transitional elements that make it seem like a cohesive whole. For example, those more yellow pages will need to be knocked back a bit to fit with the general lighter feeling of the book.

I’ll post again when I’ve made more progress or have finished it!