Review of Papier Mache Design Book by Monique Robert

My copy of Monique Robert’s new book, Papier-Mâché Design, arrived several days ago. I read it through in one sitting, getting up only for a few refills of coffee. I can’t wait to use some of the methods she describes.

This is definitely not for the grade-school art class–this is a serious book for people who are dedicated to creating 3-dimensional art.

I mention that right at the top of this review because most books on paper mache are written for a younger audience, and include step-by-step how-to instructions so you can make specific projects that will end up looking exactly like the ones the author made. However, Monique’s book will not show you the specifics of how she built that fantastic creature on the front of her book. She assumes the reader is a sculptor, with a mind already filled with creative ideas about projects the reader wants to build. She trusts you to absorb her methods into your own work.

Perhaps a better title for the book would have used the word “engineering,” rather than “design.” She includes unique techniques for making large, lightweight sculptures that are strong enough to hang from the ceiling or to ship to a distant gallery. Trust me–you won’t find these techniques described anywhere else. However, you’ll need to design your own sculptures.

Her techniques show you how to make your designs light and strong, but she doesn’t include actual design tips, as I understand the term.

Some of the ideas in the book that I intend to use immediately in my own future sculptures are:

• Her method of balancing a sculpture so she can get realistic dynamic poses. So far, my own work has been limited to critters who have all four feet firmly planted on the ground. Her methods will free me to create figures that “move” more naturally.
• Her method of creating life-like human hands. If you’ve ever attempted to draw or sculpt hands, you know this is one of an artist’s major challenges. Her instructions make this difficult operation seem easy. Many of the ideas I’ve had locked up in my mind for years include human figures that I’ve been afraid to try because I didn’t know this technique.
• Her method of preparing sculptures to hang, including the way she reinforces her work and how she installs the wire hangers.

I was particularly struck by the fact that Monique sees things in her mind in a way that is very different from the way I do. That difference is probably why her method of building her sculptures is so different from the way I do it. Let me try to explain what I mean:

You’ve heard that people who carve sculptures out of stone often say they’re “liberating” a figure that they see in the stone. They feel they’re letting the figure out when they chip away the excess material. Inuit sculptors are rather well known for making this statement about their sculpting technique.

When I see a stone, I see a stone. There’s no figure inside it for me. That’s why I don’t carve stone–I build up figures out of clay or crumpled paper and masking tape, so the sculpture gradually appears. I don’t need to worry about removing or adding too much, because I work with more forgiving materials.

Monique seems to see things in a third way that I didn’t know about before. She creates hollow inner forms that will fit inside a finished sculpture, and then “draws” the actual skin of her sculptures in thin air. I can’t explain how she does this, although she shows the method very clearly in her book. The reason I can’t explain it is that I don’t personally have the ability to see the way she does. Instead of “liberating” a figure out of a solid piece of stone, she forms the shape of a figure that she sees in empty space. It’s a remarkable ability, and one I wish I had.

The result of her method is a very strong, highly detailed sculpture that is almost completely hollow, yet amazingly strong because of the geometric shapes inside the sculpture, the type of glue she uses instead of flour and water paste, and her method of building up shapes with the paper mache.

Because I can’t see a finished sculpture so clearly in my mind as she does, I would not be as successful using her complete method. However, there are many things in her book that I’ll be including in my own work, especially the larger pieces that I’ve been thinking about lately. One thing I’ve noticed is that every book on paper mache has something in it that can be incorporated in my own work to make the process easier or stronger. (For instance, I used some of Dan Reeder’s methods to build my bobcat and lion cubs, but they don’t look anything like his monsters.)

Monique’s book is important to me not because I can reproduce her methods exactly, but because reading it caused my mind to flood with new possibilities and ideas. If a how-to book doesn’t do that, what would be the point of reading it?

One last note: There are two groups who will find this book most illuminating:

1. I highly recommend this book to a subset of folks who regularly use paper mache in their work to create airplanes and rockets and other structures that need to be both light and strong. If you’re one of these people, you’ll be especially excited about Monique’s illustrations of building a perfectly flat piece of paper mache. The resulting shape can be dried so that it has undulating waves, or it can be completely flat.  She uses this method for bird and dragon wings, but it would apply equally well to airplanes. Anyone who recognizes the strength of plywood will understand how strong laminated paper can be, especially if you use the glue she recommends.
2. If you want to sculpt large pieces, and especially if you want them to be light enough to hang from the ceiling, her methods will be invaluable. You can utilize her method of creating a strong, hollow inner form, even if you don’t think you can create the skin the way she does, (and I’m pretty sure I can’t). One possibility that I’ll be experimenting with is to create the inner form as she recommends and then cover the hollow inner form with crumpled paper and masking tape to fill out the muscles and features. This feels more intuitive to me. The crumpled paper can then be covered  with either paper strips and her glue formula, or my paper mache clay. This method should create pieces even lighter than Dan Reeder’s hanging monsters, (and way lighter than my baby elephant, who weighs in at over 40 pounds), and there’s nothing to prevent someone from mixing the two methods to create an entirely new technique.

If you’ve read Moniques book, we’d all love to hear what you think. If you have your own favorite book and I haven’t found it yet, please tell us about it.

A few months ago I told you about an artist in Canada who creates museum-quality papier mache sculptures. I also mentioned that the artist, Monique Robert, was in the process of writing a book about the unique processes she uses to create her large, lifelike sculptures. I’m happy to say her book is now available. You can order through her website at www.moniquerobertstudios.com

Check out that dragon on the cover. Some truly amazing work is coming out of Monique’s studio, and I can’t wait to see how she does it. Her techniques for creating shapes are different from anything I’ve ever seen anyone else do.

I have not yet purchased my copy (I wanted to let you know if was available as soon as I found out) but I’ll be ordering one soon. I’ll tell you more after I’ve had a chance to read it. You can order a copy and learn more about her book through the link on her website.

Some Thoughts About Self-Publishing a Full-Color Book:

Since I can’t tell you any more about Monique’s book until I’ve had a chance to read it, this seems like a good time to talk about some of the challenges an author faces when self-publishing a full-color book. Since you’re probably an artist yourself, you may be thinking about writing a how-to book of your own (admit it — the thought has crossed your mind). If so, the info below may be of some use to you.

Jessie and I recently started our own book project, and we’ve done a lot of research into the business-end of self-publishing. We’ve discovered that many artists use self-publishing services (also called author’s services) which charge fairly high up-front fees, or they charge a high price to print each book, or both.

Once the book is printed through one of these services, it looks great — but it’s not available for distribution through large online booksellers like Amazon.com. Basically, that means that every book has to be sold from your own website, (you’d better be really good at marketing) or you have to sign up for a service like Amazon Advantage which takes a hefty commission on each sale (and you ship books to them at your expense).

As far as I’m concerned, in today’s world if you can’t get your book on Amazon.com there’s not much point in writing it at all.

The good news is that you can self-publish a full-color art book at a reasonably competitive price — and have it automatically available for sale through Amazon.com — by using Amazon’s own publishing division, called CreateSpace. (And no, they aren’t paying me to mention their name). Their printing charges are quite reasonable, and there’s no set-up fees. Your book won’t show up on the UK or Australian versions of Amazon.com, which would be nice, but you can’t have everything.

Monique’s new papier mache book was published through AuthorHouse, an author’s services company that charges a fairly high set-up fee. Other artists we know have published their books through Blurb.com — click on that link to see a beautiful book by artist Carol Marine. As far as I can tell, AuthorHouse and Blurb books are not available on Amazon.com unless the author signs up for Amazon Advantage.

The “Problem” is the Full-Color Inside Pages

Most self-publishing experts recommend that authors have their books printed at LightningSource (LS).

LightningSource is so highly recommended because LS prints black and white books at a very competitive price, and every book printed by LS is immediately available for ordering by any bookstore, including Amazon.com — where LS books are always listed as “in stock.” The author never has to order a book, store a book, sell a book or ship a book if it’s printed at LightningSource. Another very nice thing about LS is that the author can keep a higher percentage of the cover price by setting their own “discount.”

However, when artists write books, we usually need color on the inside pages. Unfortunately, full-color art books are at a disadvantage at LS, too. They charge a lot more to print a book with color on the inside pages — enough more, in fact, to make your book too expensive when compared with similar books already on the market.

For new authors, there are other disadvantages to LightningSource. You have to own your own ISBN number, and you need to have a certain amount of technical knowledge in order to prepare the printer-ready computer files.

At this time, it looks like CreateSpace is the best option for full-color printing. It isn’t perfect. CreateSpace determines your royalties themselves, while LS lets you set your own discount. And although a local bookstore will be able to order one of your books that CreateSpace prints (through an agreement they have with LightningSource), you won’t make much money on these extra sales. However, CreateSpace color printing charges are so much lower and they have no set-up fees, so it (almost) makes up for the reduced royalties.

Also, with CreateSpace you don’t need your own ISBN number (they’re expensive), and the technical requirements for your computer files are a little easier to understand. Plus, the books are automatically listed on Amazon.com because CreateSpace is Amazon’s own printing company. That’s why Jessie and I will be using this company for our upcoming book. Watch this space for an announcement…

If you’ve written a book yourself, or if you’re thinking of writing one — especially a how-to book for fellow artists — we’d love to hear about your experiences.

Last week I accidentally discovered Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green, by Michael Wilcox. I ordered the book on a whim, and it has now become one of the most important resources among all the books I own on the subject of art.

I decided to write this post to tell you about the book, just in case your experience with mixing colors has been as disappointing as mine.

If you’re a professional artist who figured out color mixing years ago, this post won’t mean much to you. However, I struggled for years trying to understand why the colors I mixed for my paintings and craft projects never came out right. I was obviously doing something wrong. I now realize that I misunderstand the basic physics underlying color.

This was particularly upsetting to me because the animals I like to paint are often clothed in subtle, interesting shades that I couldn’t match on my palette.

After reading Wilcox’s book, I realize that I learned to mix colors the wrong way back in grade school. That’s when I learned that yellow and blue paint make green paint. Red and yellow make orange. Red and blue make violet.

It sounded so simple. So why couldn’t I mix these colors and make the hues I needed?

Since I didn’t understand the underlying physics of color, (and neither did my grade school teachers), most of the colors I tried to mix on my palette turned into mud.

If you mix blue and yellow paint you will get green–or something close to green. But it never seems to be the green you want. It’s very often a muddy, grayish stuff with a greenish cast–or it’s a brash, neon color that isn’t at all what your painting calls for.

Yellow and red do make orange, but what if you really wanted a muted, almost brown orange–or that specific hue that you see in a particular animal’s eyes or frog’s skin pattern? Just start adding this and that–and end up with a muddy color that’s almost, but not quite, the color you wanted.

Blue and red do make violet–or a grayish mud with a violet overtone, depending on which blue and red you mix together.

When you do manage to mix a color that’s perfect, will you be able to reproduce it next week? Only if you take very good notes, and frankly, I don’t know anyone who does. Or maybe your memory is a lot better than mine.

Of course, if you’ve taken a university-level course in color mixing, you’ll think this whole post is silly. Your paintings and craft projects will be filled with exactly the right colors, both bold and subtle, that lets your creative spirit soar.

But you only have to stand in front of the display of artist’s paints at the art store, or the acrylic craft paints displayed at your local WalMart, to see that I’m not the only one who can’t figure out how to mix colors. Manufacturers make hundreds of different hues, just for us poor folks who can’t quite figure it out.

Even the vast array of pre-mixed colors available at the store won’t help you get those muted grays that are so important in many paintings.

So, if you’re anything like me, you seem to have several options:

1. Never start a painting or craft project that doesn’t use pre-mixed colors available at the local store; or,
2. Find a book that shows swatches of thousands of colors, along with the formula for each, and thumb through it endlessly to find the color you need; or,
3. Start an ambitious project that requires subtle, interesting colors and then try to mix them on your palette by adding a bit of this, a bit of that–and then decide the muddy color you end up with is “close enough;” or,
4. Just give up and announce that you can’t paint.

I’ve tried all these options, and none of them has been been very satisfying.

That’s why I’m so excited about the book Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green. Mr. Wilcox explains exactly why my previous attempts to mix colors was so often unsuccessful (his explanation goes against everything you learned about color in school), and then he shows how to mix exactly which colors you need–including those elusive grays–every single time, using a very small number of pigments. It’s not only easier to get the colors you want, but it’s also less expensive than buying a new hue every time you run into a difficult color.

Let’s talk about green, since it’s mentioned in the title of the book:

When blue and yellow light lands together on a white surface, green light bounces back. So it really is true, when speaking strictly of colored light, that blue and yellow make green.

However, a painting (or the surface of a painted craft project or paper mache sculpture) is not made up of light. It’s made from colored pigments that absorb or reflect light, which is an entirely different thing.

And that’s why trying to mix paint as though it were pure light simply doesn’t work. Your grade-school teacher may have insisted that it would work, but it won’t.

Mr. Wilcox explains this problem with a short physics lesson, which I’ll try to recreate here.

When white light hits a surface that has been painted blue, every color except blue is absorbed into the surface, and blue light is reflected back to your eyes. You knew this already, of course.

When white light hits a yellow surface, the same thing happens–except this time every color except yellow is absorbed, and yellow is reflected back to our eyes.

Mix all the colors on your palette together to make black, and the paint will absorb every color of light, so no light at all is reflected back to our eyes.

If colored paints were actually pure color (which they are not), every time you mix any two “pure” colors of paint together you would get black. The bits of blue in the blue paint would absorb the red and yellow light, and the bits of yellow paint would absorb the red and blue light. No light would escape from the paint, and you’d see a perfectly black surface.

This doesn’t really happen because paints aren’t pure. Some light does escape when we mix two colored paints together. The problem is, the color that escapes is often not really the color we wanted or expected.

So, let’s mix two colors that really do make green:

A greenish blue, like Cerulean blue, reflects mostly blue and a little bit of green.

A greenish yellow, like lemon yellow, reflects mostly yellow and a little bit of green.

Mix them together, and the blue and yellow (plus any red, purple, and orange) will be absorbed, just as one would expect. However, since both colors also a bit of green, the green from both pigments is able to escape from the paint surface and is reflected back into our eyes. You have just created green paint.

It isn’t the blue and yellow mixed together that made green–in fact, the blue and yellow cancel each other out. However, we do see green because  green was reflected by both pigments.

This seems so obvious to me now, but until I read the explanation I just didn’t get it.

So what happens if we mix together a blue and yellow that reflect only a very tiny amount of green?

When you mix a violet blue, like Ultramarine, with a orangey yellow, like Cadmium Yellow Light, you end up with grey. There will be a greenish cast to your grey, and it may be exactly the grey your painting needs. However, if you didn’t want a muted, gray with green overtones, you’ll end up adding a bit of this color and that color in order to “fix” it, and end up with mud.

Since no paint color is pure blue or yellow or red, every paint color will reflect a tiny amount of the other colors in the spectrum. Even Ultramarine blue and Cadmium Yellow will reflect a little bit of green. That’s why the grey or brown you end up with when they’re mixed will be a very muted green. There are times when that’s exactly what your painting needs.

One of the reasons that I’m so excited about this book is that it opens up many more species for me to sculpt with my paper mache clay. In the past I tended to avoid any critter that has a fur or skin pattern that I knew I wouldn’t be able to paint correctly. Now that I understand the basic physics behind colors, (and with the help of the color swatches in Wilcox’s book) I’m confident that I can move forward with my chosen medium.

Do you know of another book that helped you understand how to mix or use color in your crafts or paintings? If so, I’d love to hear about in the comments below.