caligráfica

Making ink

Yesterday morning, in addition to making my usual coffee, I decided to try and brew some walnut ink. We'd worked with it in our first class and I'd loved two things about it. First the tea-brown color, browner than the reddish ink I've been using, was lovely and showed each stroke (which keeps me honest). Second walnut ink is non-toxic and easy to clean up with water. The deep black Higgins ink is beautiful and makes rich letters, but the black ink doesn't rinse off the nib easily. Since I often practice before bed, easy clean-up is attractive.

I ordered some walnut crystals from an eBay seller ($3 plus shipping) and they arrived quickly. This was my first attempt to mix writing ink.

It was surprisingly difficult to find the right proportions of water to crystals since most of the on-line recipes are by scrapbookers making the ink as a paper stain -- too light to write with, before I found a recipe in the December Society for Calligraphy newsletter. It's simple enough, 1 teaspoon of crystals to 1/2 cup of hot water and let brew for at least 30 minutes. I cut the recipe in half because the glass bottles I have only hold a quarter cup.

In the picture, the note is stuck to the measuring cup because I realized the brewing ink looks exactly like strong coffee so I was worried Paul would find it and toss it out when loading the dishwasher.)

I think the ink came out well, except I remembered too late the on-line advice to mix in a bit of vinegar to keep the ink from spoiling. I added a teaspoon of white vinegar which unfortunately thinned out the ink. I probably need to leave the bottle open for a day or two to evaporate a bit. An open bottle of ink -- sounds like a recipe for a disaster!

Lettering practice went pretty well yesterday. Unfortunately, by the time I finished filling a practice sheet with the letters, I was tired and one of the tines of my pen had started to bend a bit. The Gorey line, "F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leech" didn't come out as well as I'd hoped.

Still, I'm all packed and about to catch the bus for class. Without knowing whether I should bring them our not, Paul and I rolled up all the practice sheets I've done. Doing so made me realize I should get a folio and a tube to keep these sheets safely and neatly.

(Special guest modeling by Jeremy Hedgehog.)

 

 

"E is for Ernest"

 The rain stopped last night and we woke to the sun shinning, which made my little calligraphy space look even friendlier.  

My practice tonight was a little different than it's been the last few days. Even though it was done a bit later than it has been in the past, I'd slept late this morning and spent the day out with Paul, so I was rested and wanted to do a bit more than I did last night or the night before.  

 Taking a large sheet (17" X 22"), a different nib (Brause 5mm), and the red-brown ink from yesterday.  I worked carefully through some letter combinations from Calligraphy Alphabets for Beginners to practice most of the alphabet.  The new nib was harder to get ink to start flowing from after each dip and I struggled a bit to keep the reservoir from touching the paper, but the nib felt sharper and like it made better and sharper marks than the Speedball C-0.

Some of the letters felt easier -- the alternative "s" is definitely easier to make. And I'm almost confident in making the letter "d."  But the "a" is still a real struggle and frustrates me.  However much I practice, it doesn't feel like I'm getting any better.  

Still, I felt pretty confident when I started tonight's "Tinies" line: E is for Ernest who choked on a peach." Once I started though, I felt otherwise. While it feels like the letter forms are getting better, my spacing doesn't feel right -- either within letters or between words. I suspect this is what I'm going to have to spend a lot of time practicing in the coming weeks.  Still, I'm not unhappy with how tonight's line came out. 

-o=0=o-

Other stuff: I find I'm looking at lettering a lot more where ever I am. When we watched the closing credits tonight of Terry Gilliam's film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, I noticed how lovely the cards on the closing credits were. I've also started reading a book by Marc Drogin, s Calligraphy of the Middle Ages. It's got some interesting bits of history in it, though I'm not sure how accurate it is.