Welcome!

I grew up in Raleigh at a time when the nuns taught at Our Lady Of Lourdes. They lived out back of the school and wore those imposing yet Holy Habits that commanded your adoration, attention, and, quite frankly, your fear. So, when they asked you to "sit up straight" with your "feet flat on the floor" and compose your letters properly according to the Palmer Method of Handwriting, you did just that! I believe it was at that impressionable age that I became infatuated with the formation of letters. When I was introduced to calligraphy in 1978, it was no wonder I fell in love with this beautiful art form. My first taste of the calligraphic world lasted no longer than one hour. The instructor turned a piece of chalk on its edge to form calligraphic works of art from A to Z on the chalkboard. That was that! But it was all I needed to fire the embers that had been sparked in elementary school. Watching the slow, rhythmical shaping of those letters was like listening to classical music. It was not until 1997 that I enrolled in my first formal calligraphy class. Boy, were my eyes opened! I knew I had a lifelong road of learning ahead of me. It's been 38 years since that white piece of chalk was laid on its side. I am still learning. Come learn with me!

Monday, March 3, 2014

Homework Session One #4 for Reggie Class

I am currently working on the homework for Reggie's class, Session One, Homework Assignment #4.

We are to mark out gridded paper into the line spacing and interlinear spacing for a Mother Teresa poem entitled "Just It Anyway." It is 135 words long. OR we can do a poem of our choosing of similar length.

I chose to write a Love Letter to my Dad and use it instead.


This first pic is of the gridded paper. We were to make spaces 1/2" for the lettering with 1/8" interlinear spacing for the text of the piece. Needless to say, just doing this little bit took a while.

Next, I taped off an area of my Arches HP paper in which I plan on lettering. I want to lay down a light coat of yellow watercolor as background for this piece, let that dry, then do the lettering in values of blue. We are to use 5 values of one color to do the lettering. Each letter is to have a different color value, starting at 1 and going to 5 and back down to one.

Let me try to make that clearer...

Let's take a simple "I Love You."
 
"I" would be value 1.
"L" would be value 2.
"o" would be value 3.
"v" would be value 4.
"e" would be value 5.
And now we head back to 1.
"Y" would be value 4.
And so on, throughout the entire length of the poem.

I will insert pictures as I get done with each stage of this process. (Right now, my gmail is not cooperating with me and I cannot get my pics!)
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