Back to Barcelona and Book covers!

I seem to have skipped past the book cover project that I completed... But I wanted to share the research I gained in the latest module and to maintain my posting to the blog. Following my Sagrada Familia woodcut, produced in the earlier stages of the book cover project, I came up with various ideas for my book cover, based on the book A Weird and Wonderful Guide to Barcelona by Le Cool (mainly because the title appealed to me). In the end I settled for an idea based around a tourist style postcard, with a painted   city view on the front and the reverse with a postage stamp and handwritten blurb. Here is the development of my painting.

Initially I started to paint with famous landmarks enlarged amongst the city buildings, but decided that it was too busy and drew the attention away from the areas I wanted to highlight (a less obvious and cliche postcard view of the city). Here I started to build up the mosaic effect, using rubber stamps I had made to  give the impression of the work of Gaudi, in Parc Guell.

Below is the painting close to completion, with much of the painstaking mosaic pattern completed. . .

I think the time spent on the mosaic pattern was definitely worth it and the results are better than I expected I could achieve, which is great, pretty happy with my first attempt at rubber stamping.

Thanks for reading x

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Above are my woodcuts from our induction workshop, which featured as part of the last module. I chose to use Plywood which was probably not very sensible, as you are only able to cut in one direction (following the grain). However I really loved the look of the textures achieved with Ply and this can be seen in my prints, which I am pretty pleased with. I chose La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, as the subject for my woodcut because in the current project I am designing a book cover for a guide to the wonderful city. I miss it! Hope to get out there sometime soon though.

Over and out. x