Visual Alchemy – the 3D Artists’ Book

Throughout this course you'll design and work towards creating a 3D Artist Book or ‘vessel’ that incorporates print making, illustration and collage using quirky materials that are gathered or found.

You'll be working within a self-chosen theme, creating, and exploiting media to visualise your ideas. Guidance will be given in idea generation and illustration skills to transform your chosen individual narrative or theme into 2D and 3D elements, allowing you to include visual clues within your 3D final piece.

You'll be introduced to 3D skills including card sculpture and paper cutting. You may wish to build your own Artist Book from scratch, reconstruct, extend, and embellish an existing book or modify a box to hold and display your artworks in all its eccentric magnificence.

During the course you’ll be introduced to artists’ work, both contemporary and historical, to inform and inspire you. An insight into the work of contemporary artist book sculptors, Victorian paper theatres and fine artists will encourage you to further experiment with a variety of avant-garde methods of making textures and patterns to incorporate in your work.

Through a variety of tasks, you'll experiment with paper mechanics and printmaking related to your chosen theme or narrative. You'll explore ways to manipulate paper through construction and cutting techniques to create 3D structures. Negative space and silhouette will be considered in visualising your ideas and bringing your pages to life.

In addition to developing artistic design strategies, you'll be encouraged to bring your own curiosities to incorporate into your 3D. These could include small collections of found objects, travel tickets, paper samples, sand, or fabrics. Creating your own printmaking boards will enable you to experiment with quirky textures and colours that relate to your theme.

Your final piece may be a vessel of created and found curiosities, a pop-up sculptural Artists' Book or a ‘3D portable gallery’ of your musings.

• Paper sculpting and cutting techniques
• Exploration of 3D form and how to incorporate interactive elements into your work
• Creating and experimenting with obscure media
• Exploring and questioning a range of artistic processes
• Explore the possibilities created by negative space and silhouette
• Manipulation of materials for effect
• Illustration approaches
• Collage with ‘significant’ materials
• Idea generation methods
• Creation of your own printing board
• Printmaking
• Explore a variety of design aspects, including layout
• Experimentation of paint application
• Creation of an interactive 3D sculptural Artists' Book or 3D ‘portable gallery’

• Possess the skills needed to create an intriguing and imaginative Artists' Book
• Understand a range of processes related to paper construction and mechanisation to transform the flat page into 3D
• Have hands-on experience experimenting with layout, negative space and other design aspects
• Have increased confidence in your own skills and feel inspired
• Have boosted creativity and imagination
• Be encouraged to experiment and explore your ideas, remembering that there's no right or wrong way to be creative
• Possess the foundations to continue creating beyond this course
• Leave with a range of beautiful pieces that you've designed and created

All students with 100% course attendance will be issued with an official AUB Short Course certificate of attendance.

After this course, you could:

• Continue to harness your creativity and develop your metal crafting skills further; explore our full range of Art, Design, Drawing and Painting short courses
• Broaden your creative horizons and try your hand at a range of disciplines; explore our full range of evening and weekend courses
• Continue to develop your skills at home as a hobby
  

• You'll study at a leading specialist university – we know what we're doing when it comes to providing unparalleled courses
• Our tutors are industry professionals, so you'll learn from the best
• We cater for all abilities and have no formal entry requirements for this course, so there's nothing holding you back
• You'll learn in a safe and encouraging environment where there's no right or wrong way to be creative
• You'll learn 'by doing' and always feel fully included and supported
• Benefit from our incredible campus and its industry-standard studios, and use state-of-the-art equipment and software to unleash your creativity