Scalpelled Books

With these experimental pieced I went to town with the whole concept of three dimensional book illustration, using the books themselves as tautological illustrations.
I drew from the influence of many artists for these.
The first is just a rough circular practise with ink solhouettes added to frame the spiral pages, which focus around the word 'doubt':

This second one was the final piece for my A Level Art coursework project. It illustrates a scene from my beloved Dickens' 'David Copperfield'. It went a bit wrong, but I still like it, as it's based on one of the original printed illustration plates. I just adapted it for three-dimensional translation, and added colour to contribute to the dingy Dickensian scene, but only a wash so that type would still be visible:

Finally we come to my favourite. I actually did this relatively recently for my friend, Heidi's, birthday.

The book was called the Black Swan (NOT the film), and I played it cool and stuck to what I know; a scalpelled forest scene...with swans in. Heidi's little sister then pointed out that while it was pretty, Heidi wouldn't be able to read the story. Bummer.