The beauty of antique paper

Toi et Moi title page
Pencil, marker, and casein on antique book page [2016]
Found this coverless, foxed old paperback in the 50¢ bin at Bruised Apple Books in Peekskill, NY during our camping trip a few weeks ago. It was clearly a popular volume in its time (319th edition!), its slender chapters sporting titles that encompass all the feels, to use contemporary parlance.

Here are just a few…

Expansions (development)
Nerfs (nerves)
Tristesse (sadness)
Sérénité (calm)
Abat-Jour (shade, or reflect)
Chance (luck)
Ames, Modes, Etc (souls, moods, etc)

Anyway, they’re rather beautiful pages and I’ve decided to use them as drawing surfaces, despite their acidity and fragility, with a notion to take the words as prompts (though I have very little French*). Limitations are good catalysts for creativity— without any, one often suffers a kind of option paralysis. We’ll see where this goes.

Below, the full page:
Toi et Moi, drawing on old book page. . .

* Pardon my translations if they are poor; a combination of Google and context

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