I made four copies

So I made four copies. Here they all are together. That is four months of my life you’re looking at there.

The covers are made out of gold-painted paper, which I varnished with some clear paste. This dulled the paint almost to a matte finish. The title cards are pasted on and varnished again.

I hated this varnish, it gave the gold a strange bluish tint, but it was non-toxic, and what can you do? Pregnant women don’t have a lot of options when it comes to fumes.

 saints-1.jpg

This is my title page. I was very proud of it. For those of you new to the Absent Classic, Hofstead and Glass are pseudonyms of mine.

The paper is eighty-pound cartridge paper, which has a nice creamy finish but was not as opaque as I would have liked. Oh well.

 saints-2.jpg

Here is a page from the middle. I had some problems scanning in the images, and finally wound up doing black-and-white prints and hand-painting in the halos with gold acrylic paint.  Twenty-four Saints per book times four books is what, ninety-six halos?

This was more enjoyable than it sounds. The key is finding some good music to listen to while you paint. 

 saints-3.jpg

Here is another page from the book. For those of you into typography, I used Times New Roman throughout the project. I know it’s boring, but I like it.

saints-4.jpg 

This is my little copyright page, which is all the way at the back. This was the last thing I designed for the book. On the proof, the type is about a half-inch too far to the left, and I didn’t catch it until I was folding the last signatures. I wish I could say that I threw out all four, centered the border, and re-printed, but the printer chose that moment to run out of ink. Plus, I was tired.

Anyway, overall I think they turned out pretty well. On to Volume 2!