Apprentice Book (Ghosts and Empties)

Apprentice Book Reflection 

Choice:

For my apprentice book I took an excerpt from the short story Ghosts and Empties. I chose this story for a few reasons. Firstly, and maybe a bit obviously, I just really like this story. I felt the imagery and dialogue incredibly captivating and the pages seemed to turn themselves at times. I also liked that this was a very emotional story told in a very unemotional way. Secondly, I want to talk about the imagery part. I felt that it would be easier and more satisfying to make an artist book about a story with vivid imagery such as this. This story paints such a clear picture in my mind, and I wanted to try and capture a version of that picture in my apprentice book. I chose a few lines from the end of the story. I chose them because I think they contain some of the best imagery in the book, the scene where the narrator looks at the old oak tree. I also love this part of the story because it is the turning point in some. I wanted to try and represent it. 

Bookmaking: 

For my book I just use purple paper. I chose purple paper because she walks around at night so I wanted to choose a dark color. I wrote in gray black ink. I chose this color and medium because at night everything is a silhouette. I want this medium to be synergistic with the piece of work because there is a hollow feeling to this story. An emptiness and a hopelessness permeated the deep aspects of the story. I’m not sure why, but I feel like my line ink drawings represent this really well. They aren’t pretty but I think they hold a lot of emotion and definitely reflect how the story made me feel when I read it. A little thing I did was I chose to show the moon in different phases throughout the book. This was supposed to represent the timeline. In the story she hikes through the entire year, and I hope the moon changing showed that time was passing.