The Good to Know Project is full of advice + inspiration from artists/illustrators/designers on creativity, business and life.

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100 things to draw
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Getting out of the box: Etsy virtual labs recap #1
Getting out of the box: Etsy virtual labs recap #2
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Interview: Irina Troitskaya
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Review: The Exquisite Book

Posted by Amy on Friday October 22, 2010

For this week’s book review, I am thrilled to be a part of a blogging book tour that’s going out to spread the word about Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski and Matt LaMothe’s new book, The Exquisite Book.

Ever since I’ve heard that Julia (of the fab book blog Book by its cover) along with her team at ALSO were going to publish a book that was based on the Exquisite Corpse – a game that was invented by the Surrealists in the early 1920s (see more info here — I couldn’t wait to see how it would translate into a book!

The idea behind it was simple: the artist would only be shown the artwork prior to theirs, and they would continue the drawing in their own style. Whether they would be mimicking elements from the previous artist, or draw a continuation of it is left entirely to their imagination. Divided into 10 chapters, 100 artists were given two weeks to finish their artwork; with each group in charge of different chapters that were open enough but gave some structure as to how it all ties together.

The format of the book is unique – each chapter is folded so that it forms a banner that consists of 5 different artworks. When I first flipped through the book, I got really excited because it’s the first of its kind (to me anyway) and I started opening the chapters up one by one, and I stood a short distance away to admire it in all its glory. I couldn’t bear to fold them back in even!

What’s fantastic too, is the construction of the book. Making a book like this is no mean feat – especially since it’s laden with so many artworks that are joined together. You can barely see the seams where additional paper is joined to form the accordion. The publishers have clearly thought this whole thing through — down to the stiff strip at the chapter opener page to reduce the chance of the pages’ corner being folded between chapters. (It would have been better if more allowance was given though — mine has a few minor dog eared pages already!)

It was really interesting to see how 100 artists collaborated on such a huge project — can you imagine organizing this between all of them, especially when each of the artists’ work depended on the last? It’s amazing, and kudos goes to the ALSO team for a fantastic job.

The artist featured are all heavyweights in their own right — and many of them are my favorites as well (too many to count actually!) There’s Takashi Iwasaki, Camilla Engman, Susie Ghahremani, Nigel Peake, and Julie Morstad, to name a few. To get a feel of what was involved in the making of the book, I’m pleased to have had the chance to initiate a mini interview with Irina Troitskaya (featured previously, one of the artists in the book — whose work was also picked to be on the accompanying Exquisite Sketchbook.

Hi Irina! Tell us how you got involved with the Exquisite book.
By lucky accident, I guess. I admired with Julia’s patterns and
drawings for a long time and read her blog about books and one day she invited me to take part in her project. The moment I got the letter from her I just literally jumped up on a chair and probably even shouted “Hooray!” or something like that. Of course I answered “Yes!”

Did you play the Exquisite Corpse game (the inspiration behind the book) when you were growing up? Or was there another game that is similar to the idea?
We were playing it when I was a child, not too often I suppose. And when I grew up I rediscovered this game ones more, while was working with my students. I teach illustration here in Moscow.

What was it like to work on a collaborative project like this one?
Joyful! I guess because it was well organised. I know such massive
collabs can be a mess, but this one went smoothly. I got the piece
from Isaak and worked with it. I didn’t see the works of others, which is one of the rules of the game, but I knew I’m in a good company.

I love the sketchbook that came out with the book as well — it had your illustration on the cover! Could you tell us a little about it — what were you inspired by?
It was another surprise for me when they decided to accompany the book with a sketchbook with my illo on the cover. They were asking for permission and I had to re-read that letter at least twice to be sure this is not a dream and they’re going to use my picture. Because there’re so many great artrists who took part!

Answering your question about inspiration, I remember there was a time I like to explore and rework Russian national characters. Bear was one of them. I drew bears everywhere, so just couldn’t help it and made a picture about bear and bird relationships one more time. I wanted it to be a bit quirky.

And how did you relate your illustration to the one done by Isaac Tobin, the artist before you?
I liked that emptiness and some sort of abandon feeling about Isaac’s drawing. Also I remember I was inspired with those construction lines and color scheme. Any other day I’d decided not to follow so many details at once, but I couldn’t refuse any of them. So I just mixed them all together, added a bit of Russian flavour – winter, bear, you know and this was the result.

{Thanks Irina!}

And we have a special treat for Pikaland readers — one copy of the Exquisite Sketchbook is up for grabs! That’s right — we’re giving away one copy of the sketchbook, and this might just be your lucky day. Just leave a comment on this post and we’ll pick out a winner by next week, 29th October!

Click here to pick up a copy of the Exquisite Book & here for the Exquisite Sketchbook!

UPDATE: Commenting has now closed, thanks so much for participating. The winner of this giveaway is Emily, as generated by random.org.

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There’s lot of heavy posts on the blog this week, so I’m taking off a little early — thanks so much to everyone for the shout-outs and kind wishes after my announcement of Pikabooks — I can’t wait to see it grow, and I hope that you’ll join me on my journey! :)

See you next week!