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This information is reprinted from the For Beginners
column of Hand Papermaking Newsletter #81 (January, 2008).
To learn how to order Hand Papermaking bi-annual magazine
and quarterly newsletter, click
here.
Working Large Without Limitation
This is the first of two columns addressing the
incorporation of recent printing technologies with handmade
paper.
One of the challenges of making art with handmade paper
is that sometimes your ideas are bigger than your moulds and
deckles. Especially early in your papermaking career, you
are unlikely to have access to the space and equipment
needed for working large. Here is one way you can work as
large as you’d like with nothing bigger than a 12 x 18-inch
mould and deckle.
 Let’s discuss a project I worked on that involved the
entire text of the State of the Union Address. I had to get
that text onto a large swath of paper somehow. The process I
describe is but one solution to the problem. Between the
limitations of the moulds to which I had access, and the
capacity of most printers and photocopiers, the maximum size
sheet I could make was 12 x 18 inches, which then had to be
cut down to 11 x 17 inches. However, that wasn’t the size I
was going for. I was going for a large, overwhelming State
of the Union Address on bright red--about 6 feet by 9 feet,
to be specific. This meant I was going to have to tile those
sheets together.
Access to decent graphics software was crucial here. I
needed to be able to create a file that was the actual size
of the finished piece, and then crop that image down into
smaller images in a document that had rulers and the ability
to draw cropping lines for my reference. For me, this was a
combination of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, and
PageMaker. I created a document in Illustrator that was the
full size of my piece--6 feet by 9 feet. I used that file to
create my piece. Please note that you’ll need a workhorse of
a computer if the information in that file is very detailed,
since it is such a large area to cover. Mine was black and
white, no color, which was less taxing on my computer than
it might have been. Once I saved the finished full-sized
file, I drew guidelines to break the image down into the
tiled pieces -- six columns of 17 inches each, and six rows
of 11 inches each.
Next I created a document in PageMaker of the thirty-six
(6 x 6) 11 x 17-inch pages I would need for the piece. I
went back to my Illustrator document, selected an area that
was a little bit larger than the 11 x 17-inch block I had
marked off, copied it, and pasted it into the first page of
my PageMaker document. It would, of course, be easier to
keep organized if I followed a system. I started with the
upper left corner, making that page 1, and worked my way
left to right across row 1, then worked my way across the
next row and on down the page. For each page, I selected an
area slightly larger than the box I had marked off with
guidelines, maintaining the top and left edge I had marked
with the guidelines, and allowing extra at the bottom and
the right. If I’d had a laser printer, I would have been
able to print directly onto my handmade paper. However, I
had an inkjet printer, and was concerned about the image
bleeding should it get wet. (Later on, I would need to paste
the pages together.) Thus I inkjet-printed the pages onto
plain printer paper, and then photocopied them onto handmade
paper. I retained the deckle edges.
So now to piece old Georgie’s text back together. I
wanted to retain the deckle edges around the edge of the
piece, but did not want them and indeed could not retain
them at the center of the piece. The top row would remain
untrimmed at the top to retain that outside edge. The
left-most pieces would not be trimmed for the same reason.
Pieces 2-6 would be trimmed along the left edge of the
image. Precision was crucial here. Next, the pieces had to
be lined up. I placed piece 2’s left edge overlapping the
right edge of piece 1’s imagery, adjusting them to line up
perfectly. I weighted the pieces down to hold them in place
as I worked, and used wheat starch paste to adhere them to
each other. The advantages of wheat starch paste are the
slow drying time, so that I could make adjustments if
necessary, and the reversibility, which is largely a
conservation concern (or a “I might mess up” concern).
Depending on your paper and the effect you are going for,
you may find it useful to allow the seam to dry under a
blotter under weight. I was going for a textured sculptural
effect, so I brushed my wheat starch paste over the surface
and allowed the page to wrinkle at will.
Work across the top row in the same manner, trimming the
left edge and slightly overlapping the last page you put
down, lining up your imagery with care as you go. For the
second row, you will be trimming the top edge of each page,
as well as the left edge of all but the left-most page. Now
you will line each sheet up both with the sheet above it and
the sheet to the left as you go. I was even able to work
some sculptural detail into this piece. To do this, I
created a paper-mache face. I left an opening in my tiled
sheet where I wanted this face to appear. I adhered the
tiled sheet to the edges of the sculptural face. Then I
magnified the text of the pages that would cover the face
into two to three times as many pages of larger text. I
covered the face in these magnified pages, creating the
appearance that this sculptural element was pushing at the
piece’s surface and stretching the text. This dimensional
tiling was a more approximate art than the flat tiling.
With proper care and precise tiling and seaming, you
should be able to create the appearance of an image on one
giant sheet of paper, complete with computer type. The
seaming virtually disappears, even at a short distance.
Copyright 2008 Hand Papermaking, Inc.
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