Call to Artists: Signs and Portents

My fall calligraphy projects have just been publicly announced!

The CR Gallery will be holding a juried exhibit this December -- Signs and Portents. I'll be doing both the postcard graphics and (hopefully) have a piece in the show.

Click HERE for more information including a call for artists.

Logo in Roman Capitals

I finished the big logo design in Roman capital lettering on Friday. Scanned and sent it to the graphic designer immediately.

Today, the graphics designer already sent a couple of iterations back for comments from both me and the publisher (my client, who also happens to be my husband).

The Process -- in case you're curious
1. Traced and then drew Romans for a couple of months. Hadn't studying them in depth before so I got some excellent models including ones adapted from the carved Trajan column in Rome.
2. Did lots of thumbnails of possible designs as they came to me. Showed to client at various points.
3. Did several final sketches after I felt like I could really play around with Romans (proportions, spacing, serifs, curves, etc.). Got more direction from client.
4. Got the publisher's approval over the initial draft.
5. I took that design to my calligraphy instructor who made some good weight and spacing suggestions.
6. Redid my design and that's what I sent to the graphic designer, who has more experience with Adobe and graphics than I do. Also, always good to get more professional eyes on a project this big. When finished, the logo will be seen by thousands around the world.

L Series Primatek colors

Illuminated L Primatek colors low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

The last in the L series, this one has a fun dot background which turned the overall feel into something more lighthearted than usual.

To complement a more whimsical pattern, I did softer colors in a pastel scheme. This would be perfect for a child, wedding, etc.

The green and pinkish colors are from my new Primatek Daniel Smith watercolors I blogged about earlier this month. They're genuine ground stone.

Rhodalite = pink
Amazonite = green

L Series: Squiggly background

Illuminated L Squiggles low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

Here's another in the L series. This time, I tried a new background with lots of squiggles. Odd squiggly designs were occasionally used in some of the older manuscripts.

The colors ultramarine, veridian, and cadmium yellow all work for me, but the cadmium red pale is too heavy in real life. I tried toning it down with iridescence and it didn't work, either. Had to apply it extra thick to cover up green underneath, which just looked bad. That's what sometimes happens with experiments.

3 Cadmium L

Illuminated L cadmiums low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

I needed some strong colors so the dark ultramarine background wouldn't overpower the L. So, I tried out three different cadmiums -- yellow pale, red pale, and orange.

It actually works better in the scan. Viewed in person, the colors try too hard for attention and look more like a op art piece.

Contrast this with the previous post where I used 2 of the same cadmiums plus placed the lighter color in the background.

Illuminated L with Yellow Checks

Illuminated L yel checks low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

Exact same design as the "3-cadmium L", including the checkerboard background. Same colors minus the cadmium orange, just used in different spots. Here, though, the colors pop rather than overwhelm.

It looks a bit washed out in the scan, but in real life I think the colors look balanced. This is why I always end up testing my colors scheme on the scanner if it will be for reproduction in a book or something.

Posted this one a while back, so you can tell I went about 5 months between inking/backgrounds and the final colors for this series of L's.

My watercolor palette

Watercolor colors low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

I picked up some new colors for my birthday and finally got a palette that would truly organize my watercolors rather than taking them from the tubes each time I used them.

I can't wait to play with them!

I placed them roughly in a color wheel format, but since I hadn't used a number of these before they're not in the exactly places where I'd put them now that I've really tested them out on paper.

Hodgepodge
My husband kindly gave me my first artist-quality watercolors from his collection. Over the last few years, I've acquired a few as necessary when I did specific calligraphy projects.

Finally, I felt I was doing enough additions of watercolor to my works, especially with transparent stained-glass effects, that I justified taking my birthday money straight to Daniel Smith last week to fill in the gaps. Though it's not the way I'd have acquired them if I were starting out fresh, building a collection a bit at a time eased some of the financial pain.

I tried not to get too many new ones that overlapped with the gouaches I already have. Hence my favorite color, cobalt blue, isn't on here.

NOTE: I'm very lucky to have a Daniel Smith store just a few miles from my home. They're one of the premier art stores in the U.S. and they also make many of their own artist-quality paints.

PrimaTeks
The first new set I picked up are the PrimaTeks, derived from grinding actual stones. Rhodalite (bottom left), Lapis Lazuli (bottom right), Turquoise (upper right) are some of the stunning examples.

I plan on using these both to make my nature illustrations look more natural and to make my illuminated lettering more historical.

Most of them have a lovely granulating quality (i.e., the pigment settles unevenly so it looks more pebbly). The Purpurite and Sodalite in the bottom right show this off especially well.

Quinacridones
After I put the watercolors into the palette (designed by Stephen Quiller who I mentioned in yesterday's post), I noticed I had very few oranges, reds, pinks, violets, and purples. I decided I'd pick up Daniel Smith's Quinacridone Set.

I felt these colors would liven up a number of my works and wanted some more transparent colors in addition to the mostly granulating qualities of the PrimaTeks.

True Color Wheel
Because it was built in such a hodgepodge fashion, it hasn't been constructed to have exactly complementary matches all around like my gouache palette. (And, I do have more gouaches than just these.)

Since I already have a true color wheel, I felt freer to experiment, choosing new additions that I felt would work in the contemporary updates of historical styles I already do. Especially with the stained glass effects I like so much and that pop in my scanned work.

Gouache Colorwheel

Gouache Colorwheel after Quiller low rez
Originally uploaded by shellyinseattle

This year, I've been working on color.

One of the color gurus, Stephen Quiller, has written a some good books including Color Choices.

I had a number of his suggested colors already in my palette, but after reading his book I added the rest. Now I have his complete version of the color wheel, which lets me quickly figure out which colors I want to use for new works.

I found it especially useful when creating, Gift of Water earlier this year. Specifically, my first real use of viridian and phtalo blue were in this piece.

Vibrant Neutrals
Quiller chose his colors to be both the most useful for mixing AND be the closest he could get to true complementary colors. For example, Cadmium Red is the complement to Cerulean Blue.

As you mix these colors across the wheel, they turn into neutral shades with a great deal more depth than they would if you merely shaded one with black. The inner most three rings of my wheel show these neutrals as I gradually mixed more of one color towards the other.

Another neat trick
Gouaches are opaque, but if you apply them in light coats they look more translucent -- like regular watercolors. The other three rings of my color wheel are merely diluting the gouache with more and more water to obtain lighter colors. No tinting the gouache with white.

Full Strength color
The fourth ring (counting in either direction) shows what the gouache looks like at full strength. That's how dark I can get it straight from the tube with only a little water added for even spreading.

Special thanks to Louise Grunewald for discussing Quiller's palette in her workshop that I took last year.