Beginning to sort through ideas for Ellie and I’s portraits was definitely a little difficult, because it felt like such a big task to capture both our essences and also try to go deeper. I started how I normally do with brainstorming on paper. This helped a lot, because I found some characteristics that stood out to me in Ellie and that I found similar in myself. I went from there, incorporating some smaller details that she told me and that I observed.
I had the idea to make the button flowers for Ellie’s side almost immediately, and then did some internet research online also about book art, and how I could incorporate photos into my book.
The first thing I did was start making the button flowers.
After doing the bulk of the work inside the books, I felt that they still didn’t really have enough detail and personality, and I started wishing I had done something incorporating photography – I had a really good idea for some environmental portraits, but it was already too late to pull the whole thing off – so I decided to do some portraits involving little elements of our day to day tendencies and trademark looks to give the books a more personal and “marked” feel.
Links to PDFs of photos Ellie Page print-2dpiaq5 & Me Page print-q979zc
I also decided to make a frame to attach the books to, to make the whole piece cohesive and more interesting.
