The Altered Book

10/23/2011

Description:
Old books are interesting in many ways. They have beautiful thick paper and often the typography is interesting. Many times they also have interesting images and prints. However the subject matter of your book will be your ultimate inspiration. You will be creating sculptures from old books and the subject-matter of the book will guide the sculpture you make. Your sculpture will be formed with the pages of your book.

Objectives:
Students will learn paper cutting, gluing, and folding techniques. Students will consider the relationship between the subject of their book and the sculpture that they create out of it.

Paper Techniques

Cutting Paper into Shapes

You can improve or make sculptures from simply cutting paper into interesting shapes.

Carving paper out to form negative space
By carving into your book, you can expose images or words in a creative way. You can also carve shapes to enhance your sculpture.

Folding paper
There are many ways to fold the paper in your book to help your sculpture. You can just simply fold the pages back in interesting ways, or you can create origami type sculptures. You can also roll the paper in different ways to create curves and waves.

Gluing paper to make three-dimensional shapes
You can use paper mache techniques to glue paper together to create three dimensional shapes. There are many ways to sculpt with paper by crumpling it up and then covering it with strips of paper or simply gluing shapes together to form three dimensional objects.