When you’ve spent decades teaching in-person classes in book binding, you’ve made a bunch of demo books!
You work through a stage in the structure while students pay attention and ask questions. Then they complete the steps you just demonstrated, while you mingle and help those who are confused or struggling.
Teaching, over time, presents so many variables. You might think you’ve seen it all, but in the next class a student will present you with a new challenge for you to make your instructions more clear, your reasoning obvious, and the skill steps manageable.
You are always looking for ways to present something in a slightly different way so that students can actually “hear” and absorb what you’re communicating.
I love the process.
But it’s also about being a role model. You can’t tell someone not to listen to their internal critic, you need to explain how to stop listening and model that behavior. You can’t tell someone to learn color theory, you need to explain the importance of color theory in your own artistic practice, suggest resources, and give examples of the joy it brings you. None of this may convince any single student, but over time I’ve found that the messages you give to students, if they are soundly based in your own years of practice, settle into the student’s mind and they find themselves acting on those messages.
Every few weeks I get a note from a student saying some variation of “I was going to do X, but then I heard your voice telling me why there were better options.”
All those hours of class prep, the clear handouts, the organized approach in class, and my seemingly silly digressions about the Zombie Apocalypse have paid off.
Perfectionism
The number one “issue” I deal with in book binding classes is a student’s hold on getting it (whatever action we are performing) perfect.
Perfectionism is always a sign of the internal critic trying to stop you from putting the practice into a task that is required to get to mastery.
Mastery of a task is what we aim for. Perfectionism stops creativity because it prevents us from moving towards mastery, and from experimenting.
As a result of teaching binding I have ended up with a lot of demo books where something is not right. Why? Because when students mis-tear their sheets I substitute my correctly torn sheets so they don’t have a huge discrepancy between their torn sheets in their collated signatures. I want them to be happy with the end result. I want them to have something structurally sound. I already know the full process and can work around issues their errors might have raised.
I can always tell the students who will go on with and stay with binding—they inadvertently tear half a page away and pass it off as, “I’ll collage on that page.”
That’s the attitude I want to instill. I want them to try hard, and to work towards mastery. But when they don’t achieve mastery in one go (or 100+) I want them to still enjoy the process and the outcome. I want them to see the book for what it is—a first attempt at a structure made to contain their thoughts, sketches, practice, and learning. Something which was once a pile of flat paper and now is an object not only of utility but beauty. An object they made.
While demonstrating, if something goes wrong in their book and I swap pages with them, I show them that I don’t value my book less—I know I’ll still enjoy that book.
The page spread in today’s post is from one of those in-class demonstrations. If you look at the top of the verso page you’ll see that page ends and there is a little bit of gray paper extending past the top of the paper. (I was collaging something on the previous page, so I extended the collaged papers to meet the height of all the other pages. I don’t always do this. Sometimes I simply ignore the short pages. But since I did use collage this time I have something visible to show you so I can write about perfectionism.)
A student in this class, mis-measured a complicated tear pattern and ended up with several short pages. Over all the tear had gone quite well for her, but when she compiled her pages she was crestfallen. I don’t want that when we are making books.
Now years later I’ve taken this book off the shelf and started to fill it. I got to the first short page and smiled. I remembered that after the pages were switched out the student’s attitude switched. She still makes books today. Would she have anyway? Perhaps, but I know this made a difference on the day.
There are also the students who didn’t have a disaster who I coached into realizing that the small “imperfections” they thought were ruining their book were just evidence of learning. (And evidence that their internal critic was getting them to focus on perfectionism before mastery.)
It all balances out.
Teaching bookbinding isn’t just about presenting and demonstrating a structure. When you teach binding for journaling it’s about knowing which student needs which approach so they can continue to grow their creativity.
We might not always match the correct response to the student’s “trials” but the act of engaging in that way is the fun of teaching.
That short page in this journal reminded me of how much I loved teaching.
Don’t Give Up
If you’ve been making books and it hasn’t been working out for you don’t give up. Examine your expectations and bring them into alignment with your current skill level. It’s like drawing—if you don’t have certain skills then your expectation can’t be to draw with precision and accuracy.
If your books aren’t working out they way you hoped ask yourself what skills you need to improve—and get those skills.
You might do this through reading books on binding. Here’s a list of books on binding that I like.
You might take a class. If you live in a city where there is a book arts community you will find organizations like the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Or there may be local craft organizations who offer classes. Look at samples of the structure you’ll make in class; decide if it is something you think would be fun to work in.
Look at the requirements for the class. If you are new to binding, start with a class that teaches the basics. This is first self-serving so you have an enjoyable experience and are not swamped in class. But if an instructor wrote in the description that the book project is for “experienced binders” realize that the pace of the class won’t allow time for the instructor to take time to fill you in on all the skills the other students have already learned and practiced. It’s just common sense to not start with that class, and it’s also politeness—to the instructor and the other students.
If there are no classes where you live try YouTube tutorials or Patreon Book Arts sites.
If there are book artists in your area that you’ve met at art fairs ask if they can tutor you. (Most will be too busy making a living to make time for you so don’t take it personally; but it also never hurts to ask—as long as you understand that they will need to bill you at the hourly rate they are giving up from their independent work, to teach you! Again, it’s just politeness. Be sensible.)
Whatever you decide to do realize that if you’re an artist making books is one of the great pleasures in your practice. You get to select your favorite paper (until it goes defunct, blah, blah, blah, you know my gripe). You get to have the page size and format you want. (I cannot stress how important this is—landscape books may work for some artists, but for most of my life I’ve stood when sketching out, and a large landscape format book is a wide, wide, [did I mention wide?] heavy object to balance as you work standing, juggling water, brushes, and a palette.)
Also important, as the binder you get to decide what goes on the cover. This means you can experiment with paper marbling, paste paper, painted papers, a range of commercially available and exotic papers that speaks to your aesthetic, or a world of fabrics (both commercial book cloth and book cloth you make yourself.)
Each of these decisions makes the book more and more personal to you; and more and more of a joy to work in.
Happy binding!
Note: There are a lot of ways things can go wrong when hand tearing paper for binding. I spend time preparing students for the most obvious mishaps. You can see a very old video where I explain my tearing method here. Or you can go to YouTube and watch my Pamphlet making class for a more recent video.
