An update you on how the gothic project turned out to be posted later. Meanwhile...
...yes, I'm back. But this time I have some good reasons for being away.
Yesterday I practiced (copperplate) calligraphy for the first time in over a month -- Thursday was my first class (uncial) in almost as long. What happened you ask?
For reasons too complex and boring to go into here, I had to defend my dissertation months ahead of schedule (have I mentioned I'm a PhD student in English? Anyway, that too.). To be able to do this, I had to spend 3.5 weeks writing. Write I did too, more than 100 pages, right up to the very last moment. As Flanders and Swann said, it was all right for quantity, but there wasn't much I could do about the quality by that point.
The shocking news was that it was approved by my committee. Barring some revisions which I'm excited about having the chance to make, my PhD is finally done. I'm still recovering from the combined shock and exhaustion. This past weekend, spent in Santa Barbara with Paul, went a long way toward bringing me back to earth
Now, update is over, back to calligraphy...
I'm starting back to my copperplate class tomorrow. Here's a sample sheet by DeAnn:
She's recommended a orange red ink which is a lovely bright color and works especially well with the pointed pen. I'm surprisingly nervous at returning and being behind, especially after seeing what everyone else is doing and knowing I haven't been practicing at all. However, last week when I attended her uncial class (more later) DeAnn promised to give me extra tutoring so I can catch up. We've got a bit of a trade going on as I worked on her blog to give it a more unified look with her website.
On Thursday I attended my first uncial class at RAND, also with DeAnn. It's a totally different sort of hand. Eventually we'll switch to the broad chiseled nib, like we used for gothic, but for now we're using speedball nibs. I've never used them before -- it's quite a change. It gives the hand an art deco look that's interesting.
I'm still struggling a bit with the proporitions of the letters, something you'll see when I start posting pictures of my own stuff.
How will it work having two lettering clases going at once, one pointed pen, one not? Who knows. What I do know is I've missed lettering a lot and am thrilled to be back at it.
Although I haven't taken any pictures yet, I did do some lettering practice last night and the one before. Tuesday night I was quite tired and it showed, not so much in terms of quality, but after thirty minutes I just wasn't feeling it and decided to stop. But last night was strange. I could have started practice at 7 or 8 but waited until 11 (admittedly, this was partly caused by wanting to watch Doctor Who extras as we just got the specials on blu-ray). It's like I'm so busy looking forward to lettering, I wanted to delay the actual practice itself.
Why do I delay? I don't really understand the reason. Clearly I'd do better work by day or earlier in the evening than I do right before bed when my eyes are tired. Yet the calligraphy right before bed is becoming routine.
Last night's practice itself was okay -- I'm still struggling with spacing issues though. The Tinies I did last night (L is for Leo) didn't come out as well as I wanted so I'm going to try again tonight. I'll take pictures of both last night and the (hopefully) better work to come and put them both up.
Tonight, my promise to myself is to start practice before 8pm -- maybe right after I've got home from work and had a walk.
...no, not dead. Just too busy.
This has been one of the busiest weeks I've had since, well since a long time ago. Circumstances (my parents' house in another city not selling for the past 24 months) mean that my dad is living here in LA while their house is more than a thousand miles away. Yet maintaining an apartment in the city while also trying to sell their house in Portland was just costing far too much. The upshot is that as of this past February 1 my dad is living with us.
Not a bad thing, but...
Getting him moved in entailed a large amount of clearing out, cleaning up and re-organizing. This is because our guest room / study was only nominally so, but in reality it was more of a garage, storing all sorts of things we hadn't found room for anywhere else and collecting impressive quantities of dust. At the same time, I helped him move out of his downtown apartment. While it was furnished, there was four car trips full of stuff to be moved. Thrown into all of this was a birthday party with an elderly aunt.
Anyway, he's moved in, which is great. It's also great that the house is cleaner and more organized than it's been in months (not just a few months either). And my plan is to settle down and start lettering and blogging again. It certainly was embarrassing to go to class Monday and realized I'd not improved at all since the previous week -- proof one doesn't get better if one doesn't practice.
Besides, poor Ida has been waiting for more than a week for me to do her Tinies.
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Image attribution:http://www.flickr.com/photos/84299143@N00/ / CC BY 2.0
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