I met an artist that paints on books and I thought, "How cool is that?". So I did an exploratory piece that was pretty fun. Then a writer friend had a birthday coming up so I had the idea of doing a portrait of her dog on a book. Great idea, lot of work. Way more than I would have imagined. Just finding the right cover surface to work on is more involved than I would have imagined. Modern cardboard surfaces are too cheap and start pilling as soon as they get wet. Some books are partially cloth wrapped and some have too much type embossing. Only older books that are canvas wrapped really work well and finding ones that don't have a lot of embossing is difficult. Then there was some experimenting to figure out how to do type on the spine. In short, this was a real voyage of discovery. But the end product is worth it. And thanks to Dollar Tree for selling hardcover books so my failed experiments weren't expensive!
