Mermaid Mask Book

 

Fellow artist Jane Cheek gave me some fabric dyes, and I decided to try them out on a book cover.  I started out with a calico that had spiral patterns on it. After all, using just plain fabric wouldn’t be much of a change over using paper.  Some of the fabric dyes stain just like ink, except without bleeding. Others, especially the pearlescent ones, feel more like acrylic paint in that they leave a residue and don’t have that cloth feel.  I didn’t have anything like a neutral shade to outline in, so I used a fabric marker.  That was a mistake, as the fabric marker had a fat tip and didn’t leave a nice line. The mermaids’ faces were blank, as the marker couldn’t get anything like detail.

I left the mermaid faces blank while I did the beading.  The beading, as usual, takes a long time, but adds a nice layer of texture. Unlike glued embellishments, the beads can move slightly without coming undone, so you can play with them while you’re holding the book.  I used thread to add a webbing texture on the fins.  The sewing actually extends past what you can see on the cover, as I needed some for selvage.

I experimented, trying to get the faces to look right.  First I tried painting eyes and mouths with the fabric dye, but they just looked blank.  I tried using brown thread to create lines, but with the fat marker outline, it didn’t look right.  I thought about painting faces on with acrylic, but then the faces wouldn’t match the bodies. 

I reasoned that if the faces weren’t going to match the bodies anyway, I might as well just make three dimensional faces that matched their fish bodies.  I made these masks of translucent polymer clay then brushed tinted mica powder on them.  While I have some art-doll face sprig molds I made a few years ago, they are in plaster, and don’t do well with anything but real clay, so I had to use the purchased flexible polymer clay molds.  To make the dolls look like they were three-quarter views, I impressed the oval of clay off center in the mold.  I like how surreal it looks.

The endpapers were a gift from Mary Swallow, a very generous friend of mine, who bought the paper for a project and didn’t use it.  I have enough paper left for many more books.