Reflection of Choice

When faced with choosing a story to interpret into my artist’s book Good With Boys stood out to me for its relatable content. Everyone has gone through the experience of having a crush in grade school and wanting to be around them. I myself have experienced specifically going on a field trip with a crush and being ecstatic when I was in the same chaperone group as her. I wanted this relatability that forms a present connection between the reader and the story to also be present between the viewer and my artist book. The POV format also played a large contribution to the style of my book. Not simply that it was in first person, but also due to it being from a child’s perspective. The imagery allowed for lots of creative control. As I will mention in my bookmaking reflection, I searched for key phrases that would make for a worthwhile page and all three were crafted from the imagery from the story. On top of all else it was just a fun story. Because of this it was equally as fun to devise a way to artistically express what was being written. I used the artist book to not only express, but to expand upon the content given to us in the story.

Reflection of Bookmaking

A lot of ideas went through my head to make this apprentice book possible. So much so that I had to tone down a lot of my thoughts and remind myself that this was just for practice and not meant to be an actual artist’s book. The idea that I settled on was to create something that could have potentially been created (or at least visualized) by the narrator of the story. This is especially indicative on the second page where I drew a map in the perspective of the narrator. The map is showing off the discovery room described on the third page. I designed the map to look nearly identical to how it was being described. Showing the girl’s side and the guy’s side as well as the brain and the exhibits. I wanted to give the feeling that the narrator was, for example, drawing it out on a napkin while telling the story. For the final page I went with a picture of a butterfly and a picture of a T-Rex because I considered them to likely have stood out to the narrator as significant enough events for the story i.e. something she would want to make note of. I made the choice to have the T-Rex be real as opposed to a skeleton because I considered child-like wonder to have filled in the space with a real T-Rex, and also because it is a lot easier to draw.