Angela Rockett is once again curating a juried show at the ER Gallery. this time the theme being "Gift of Water".
Read more details HERE.
Posts
Work complete on the Parish Hall window wall
2 years ago
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Martin Jackson Workshop
A couple of weekends ago, I had the joy of full calligraphy weekend with one of the masters, Martin Jackson. It was divine, but exhausting, especially causing eye fatigue after concentrating so hard for hours at a time.
Uncials
The first day, we concentrated on uncials. The quality of the instruction I've had from my regular instructor, Kathy Barker, showed; when Martin came around to evaluate my work, he declared there was nothing at all wrong. All he could find were some nits and suggest a few alternatives. I, of course, felt very good about my strong lettering.
Good enough, that I only sketched out a final piece of the next day rather than doing more drafts.
Gold
Martin also lead us through the process of gold leafing with the traditional gum ammoniac, a sap gather from Iran. (Previously, I had only used a modern plasticizer as a base.)
We started with the dried sap nuggets, reconstituting them with distilled water and allowed to set overnight. At the start of day 2, Martin showed how he poured it through a couple of pantyhose layers to sift contaminates out.
One time, he found a small black eyelash in his, and it at once humanized the entire gather of the sap nuggets. But this time we found only small pieces of grit and such not.
After we finalized our calligraphy, we applied the gum ammoniac with a feather quill, and allowed it to dry until glossy. To activate it, we breathed through straws and quickly placed the transfer gold down. Burnished. Breathed. More gold. And burnished again.
It turned out so good that it's worth framing. I've since gotten some really top-notch matboard, and my instructor is helping me archivally mat the piece with some very wide margins around it. I'll load the pic later.
Sidenotes
By now I know most of the calligraphers in the area, at least the ones who show up in public. So it was a great social event during lunchtime, as everyone shared calligraphy stories.
Blog readers may recall that I went to Molly Hashimoto's demo last month. Well, this time she was one of the students, and I got to tell her how much I appreciated seeing her journals.
Uncials
The first day, we concentrated on uncials. The quality of the instruction I've had from my regular instructor, Kathy Barker, showed; when Martin came around to evaluate my work, he declared there was nothing at all wrong. All he could find were some nits and suggest a few alternatives. I, of course, felt very good about my strong lettering.
Good enough, that I only sketched out a final piece of the next day rather than doing more drafts.
Gold
Martin also lead us through the process of gold leafing with the traditional gum ammoniac, a sap gather from Iran. (Previously, I had only used a modern plasticizer as a base.)
We started with the dried sap nuggets, reconstituting them with distilled water and allowed to set overnight. At the start of day 2, Martin showed how he poured it through a couple of pantyhose layers to sift contaminates out.
One time, he found a small black eyelash in his, and it at once humanized the entire gather of the sap nuggets. But this time we found only small pieces of grit and such not.
After we finalized our calligraphy, we applied the gum ammoniac with a feather quill, and allowed it to dry until glossy. To activate it, we breathed through straws and quickly placed the transfer gold down. Burnished. Breathed. More gold. And burnished again.
It turned out so good that it's worth framing. I've since gotten some really top-notch matboard, and my instructor is helping me archivally mat the piece with some very wide margins around it. I'll load the pic later.
Sidenotes
By now I know most of the calligraphers in the area, at least the ones who show up in public. So it was a great social event during lunchtime, as everyone shared calligraphy stories.
Blog readers may recall that I went to Molly Hashimoto's demo last month. Well, this time she was one of the students, and I got to tell her how much I appreciated seeing her journals.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Arabian Nights Title Pg low res
About a year ago, I did the title and author names for Open Design's Six Arabian Nights project.
This is a stretched out hand called, "Legend", which has the sense of drawn-out swoopiness you find in Arabic writing.
Compare this to the Carolingian from the last two posts, and you'll note both have squat, drawn out shapes to their letters. So you can see how this hand was developed from the older form.
Copyright Open Design 2008.
This is a stretched out hand called, "Legend", which has the sense of drawn-out swoopiness you find in Arabic writing.
Compare this to the Carolingian from the last two posts, and you'll note both have squat, drawn out shapes to their letters. So you can see how this hand was developed from the older form.
Copyright Open Design 2008.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Carolingian Practice 2 low res
After a week of practicing, you can seem my ability to write in Carolingian has improved quite a bit. Some good things here, like "wonderment" at the bottom right.
There's still some experimentation, but that's true even when I know a hand well
I like trying out different ways to write letters to see what works best for a particular project. But I always try to maintain good lettering practices like consistency, etc, or at least knowing why I am breaking the "rule" for a particular point.
General Points
** Dating your work like I have allows you to see how much you've progressed. However, I don't keep many of these pieces due to sheer volume. If you did keep them, you could cut them up and use them for collage elements or bookbinding.
** If you're just learning a hand and are writing with letter families (see post from 1/26/09), then exercise your brain trying to come up with words with just those letters.
Other brain expanding options: words that begin with particular letters, words with many different letters. Or just use pangrams like, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."
Copyright 2009 Shelly Baur.
There's still some experimentation, but that's true even when I know a hand well
I like trying out different ways to write letters to see what works best for a particular project. But I always try to maintain good lettering practices like consistency, etc, or at least knowing why I am breaking the "rule" for a particular point.
General Points
** Dating your work like I have allows you to see how much you've progressed. However, I don't keep many of these pieces due to sheer volume. If you did keep them, you could cut them up and use them for collage elements or bookbinding.
** If you're just learning a hand and are writing with letter families (see post from 1/26/09), then exercise your brain trying to come up with words with just those letters.
Other brain expanding options: words that begin with particular letters, words with many different letters. Or just use pangrams like, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."
Copyright 2009 Shelly Baur.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Carolingian Practice 1 low res
I'm learning a new hand, Carolingian, that was developed and popularized under Charlemagne the Great.
Here's my very first page of practicing.
Not that I can imagine people swiping this particular "piece", but copyright Shelly Baur 2009.
Tips for learning a new hand
Since many of you have fountain pens, you can learn to write with this font. Of course, any chisel-edge will do including markers.
1. Start off just trying to do basic marks with the correct pen angle. Note the squares in the upper left corner. Then the swooshes then the circles.
Carolingian mostly adheres to a 20 degree angle. So these practices help you get used to writing at 20 degrees, plus learn to make some of the basic lines/curves of the hand.
2. After you have the basic pen angle down, try to draw your lines at the writing angle. Carolingian tilts at a 5 degree angle from a straight line. You can see me start working on this with the line of l's I did.
3. Add in letters. My instructor believes starting with lettering "families" makes things easier in the beginning. So all the letters that are based on "o" like c and e are practiced, and so on.
4. Then add in words to get good spacing both between letters and between words.
5. I find that tracing a practice sheet using the same sized pen gives me the muscular coordination to do lettering much, much faster than if I try to duplicate a sheet from just looking at an exemplar. So, this example is done on good tracing paper.
Here's my very first page of practicing.
Not that I can imagine people swiping this particular "piece", but copyright Shelly Baur 2009.
Tips for learning a new hand
Since many of you have fountain pens, you can learn to write with this font. Of course, any chisel-edge will do including markers.
1. Start off just trying to do basic marks with the correct pen angle. Note the squares in the upper left corner. Then the swooshes then the circles.
Carolingian mostly adheres to a 20 degree angle. So these practices help you get used to writing at 20 degrees, plus learn to make some of the basic lines/curves of the hand.
2. After you have the basic pen angle down, try to draw your lines at the writing angle. Carolingian tilts at a 5 degree angle from a straight line. You can see me start working on this with the line of l's I did.
3. Add in letters. My instructor believes starting with lettering "families" makes things easier in the beginning. So all the letters that are based on "o" like c and e are practiced, and so on.
4. Then add in words to get good spacing both between letters and between words.
5. I find that tracing a practice sheet using the same sized pen gives me the muscular coordination to do lettering much, much faster than if I try to duplicate a sheet from just looking at an exemplar. So, this example is done on good tracing paper.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Dayglow Supernova L
Copyright Shelly Baur 2009
Taking my husband Wolf's suggestion to push the color scheme all the way to day glo. (At least, as far as I could easily do with my current color palette.)
Taking my husband Wolf's suggestion to push the color scheme all the way to day glo. (At least, as far as I could easily do with my current color palette.)
decorated k's
Copyright Shelly Baur 2009
Results of the the gouache color test I posted about in the last entry.
* Upper left: Color scheme that's more in line with William Morris and the Arts and Craft movement. Cadmium yellow shade, pearl gold, with the green and purple both custom mixes. Violet shades weren't developed until the Victorian era when a chemist processed them from coal tar.
* Upper right: Traditional colors including cobalt blue, cadmium red/alizarin crimson mix, brilliant gold, and a shade of cadmium yellow.
* Lower right: Traditionally, the royal colors of purple and gold were used for premier book projects. I tried the gold both on the white background and on top of a red base to see the comparisons. Other than the pearl gold, everything else is a mixed color
* Lower left: Cerulean blue, sap green, cadmium red, and a shade of cadmium yellow. Came out looking like acid house colors almost. Wolf thinks I should just push things all the way with the day-glo colors and see what I come up with.
Gouaches used were artist's quality Windsor & Newton's. Except for the golds, which were Schmincke.
Results of the the gouache color test I posted about in the last entry.
* Upper left: Color scheme that's more in line with William Morris and the Arts and Craft movement. Cadmium yellow shade, pearl gold, with the green and purple both custom mixes. Violet shades weren't developed until the Victorian era when a chemist processed them from coal tar.
* Upper right: Traditional colors including cobalt blue, cadmium red/alizarin crimson mix, brilliant gold, and a shade of cadmium yellow.
* Lower right: Traditionally, the royal colors of purple and gold were used for premier book projects. I tried the gold both on the white background and on top of a red base to see the comparisons. Other than the pearl gold, everything else is a mixed color
* Lower left: Cerulean blue, sap green, cadmium red, and a shade of cadmium yellow. Came out looking like acid house colors almost. Wolf thinks I should just push things all the way with the day-glo colors and see what I come up with.
Gouaches used were artist's quality Windsor & Newton's. Except for the golds, which were Schmincke.
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