Sketch for Medieval Illuminated "O"

This coming Sunday, May 5, the North Carolina Museum of Art will be having a Medieval Family Festival from 1pm-4pm. Lots of folks will be in costume! The Triangle Calligraphers' Guild will be setting up their very own Scriptorium! We will be demonstrating the techniques of lettering with pen and ink. I will be demonstrating this Illuminated "O" that I have designed just for this Festival. There will be some hands-on activities for the participants. Come on out and join the fun, either by yourself, with friends, or with your kids! And if you feel like dressing up for the occasion (Medievally speaking), you'll fit right in!

The Process: Sneak Peak

Here is a Sneak Peak at the bottom right-hand corner of the Bookplate I am designing. The Light represents Knowledge.

Repurposing Household Items

The Yellow Ashtray was my Mother's. In the 50's and 60's there were a lot of Social Smokers, if not habitual ones! The Hollywood Movies of that era made it a sort of glamorous habit to acquire. Neither my Mother nor my Father smoked, but being the gracious Southern Hosts that they were, many ashtrays were placed strategically all over the house to make sure their guests felt right at home!

I loved The Yellow Ashtray, so when Mom was thinking about letting it go, I grabbed it! Now that she is gone, I use it to hold various calligraphic utensils as I work. And I think of her.

The other item is a superfluous Toothbrush Holder that no longer had a place to live in any of my bathrooms. And my grown kids, who have kids of their own, and houses of their own, don't always want my castoffs! So, once again, I try to figure out how it can be used. It is perfect to hold the brushes/pens I am currently using! And any drips falling down the stems of these tools are caught at the bottom, safe and sound from my desktop! Kind of like an ashtray that would catch the ashes before they hit Momma's Fine Furniture!

The Process: Details of Step One

You have seen the gridwork for Step One of The Process in my previous post. I thought I would now explain how it became what it is.

The client wanted a design for a 3"x5" Bookplate. There would be lots of lettering in this small space. So, how do you do work in such a tiny area with so much lettering? You don't! You make it bigger, and once the design is finished, it is scanned and resized to fit the 3"x5" as requested.

Here is where graph paper comes in handy. It has little squares all over it that are equal in size. So, I drew out a 3" by 5" rectangle on the graph paper, lining up the top and bottom of this rectangle with the squares of the graph paper. To make this rectangle bigger, I then increased each corner of the 3x5 by 8 squares and connected the corners. It's kind of like Zooming Out with a camera.

In other words, what started out as 12 squares by 20 squares (3"x5") became 28 squares by 36 squares (7"x9"), and that bigger rectangle is much easier to work with!

Now, you are wondering, if the client wanted something that is a rectangle, how come there is a circle in the template?

Good question!

As I thought about all of the lettering that needed to be a part of this Bookplate, I remembered the client wanted a border. Why not put some of the lettering inside the border and that would free up space within the rectangle? My next thought was, a circle with lettering in it is beautiful. Why not make the border a circle instead of a rectangle?

So, I took out my compass and made a circle that would fit into the size of the rectangle, and now part of the lettering will be in that circle border. Some will be inside the center circle. And now the corners of the rectangle are freed up for more input.

When I was finished with this graph work, I showed it to my husband. He said, "That's a lot of geometry!" I said, "I don't know what it is, but it is now the template for my design!"

The Process: Step One

I have started The Process. Let me explain.

When I am given a design project to do, there is a process to it. One just does not sit at the drawing board and come up with the finished piece in one stroke, close the book as it were, and say Ta Da!

There are many steps to the process, and each step takes a lot of thought, a lot of drawing and redrawing, and a lot of time. And then you are back at a lot of thinking all over again.

So, here is Step One to this particular commission. You will have to be content with this one step for quite a while...till after May 12th! But, when the end result is handed over to the recipients, you will get the full story!

Display in the Eva Perry Library in Apex

I am a member of the Triangle Calligraphers' Guild, and many of our members have their work on display right now at the Eva Perry Library in Apex. Above are photos of that display. My pieces are, from top to bottom: Bride & Groom envelope and Watercolor Techniques Chart, NEULAND bookmark, I Love You, and ONCE. 

You can join us in learning once a month at our guild meetings. 

Go to http://www.trianglecalligraphersguild.com/  to see what we are doing.

OR

I teach classes!!!

Practicing Unflourished Italic Capitals

So, all last week and this week I have been practicing. Getting back to the basics. A few years ago I took both Italic online calligraphy classes that Martha Lever offers through CreativeWorkshops. I highly recommend beginners as well as anyone who has been doing calligraphy for a while to enroll in her courses.

I have been taking Italic lettering classes on and off since 1997. Martha breaks each letterform down to an easy, palatable, stroke by stroke way that is not hard to understand or practice.

I have not taken any of her art classes, but I feel pretty sure they will be just as wonderful, informative, and user friendly as the ones I took. 

I like using regular old school composition books in which to take notes. And trust me, I take copious notes. Even though this has been about the 7th or 8th time I  have watched her videos, and have previously taken copious notes all of those times, I still takes notes!

This page is part of what I did today, using double pencils so that I can easily see the stroke lines and how they meet up.

Tonight I will take my first full class to learn Spencerian!