Christopher Locke (modern fossils, TSA confiscation sculptures, adult coloring book) sez, "I want to hand-draw a few hundred portraits on Post-It Notes, then compile them into a book, so I'm asking people to buy the portraits in order to fund the project: $25 gets you hand-drawn likeness of yourself, arriving in the mail and suitable for framing. The process will help me in teaching middle-schoolers about dedication to long-term projects."
Locke's work is always terrific, imaginative, playful, and exceeds expectations in its execution. You might also remember him from the phone amps made from old brass instruments and the sketchbook designed to alleviate the terror of the blank page.
$20+ gets you a custom portrait (possibly for inclusion in the book), $35+ gets you a pre-ordered book.
The book will be a collection of hand-drawn portraits (originally on sticky notes), in varying styles and color. While I would like to make the book 3" square, just like the drawings, I think the printing process will require a small border around the images. So I am left with two options: Make the book more like 3.25" square, or lose part of every drawing to edge bleed and trimming. I'm looking at going with the former. So hopefully the book will be 3.35" square, with full color gloss pages. The drawings will be as close to actual size as possible, and one portrait will be on each page. Since the book is so small, I will have to use a special binding method that will allow the pages to open fully. Normal binding might prevent the book from opening flat, and we would not be able to see the part of the drawing closest to the spine. I want to be able to see the entire image on every page… So we are left with a very expensive method for binding. The more backers buy a portrait, the more pages will go in the book. I'd like to have more than 250 images, but 200 will be the minimum.
(Thanks, Christopher!)
