caligráfica

Final Project: Winding Things Up

(Found in my Drafts folder -- this was written in 2009 -- it's about my final project for DeAnn's gothic textura class. The project remains unfinished. O the shame.)

My last gothic class was a while ago.  It ended wonderfully.  I'm still amazed at what a great time I had learning and doing it.  We had a two week break, but tomorrow is my first copperplate class

 I spent Friday afternoon  with DeAnn Singh, my teacher, talking about finishing.  What I've done is a layer of gilding on the initial capital (a T) and have started painting the decorative illumination. 

 

New Classes

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. 

World's Cutest Police Car?

The other day I was at my calligraphy class, which is held at a middle school in Beverly Hills.  When I came out I saw the following very cute SmartCar police car.  It's a real police car, complete with lights and siren.  So very cute -- and like all SmartCars it looks like you could pick it up and tuck it in your pocket.

SmartCars have long held a certain fascination for me. Back in 1999, the first summer I spent in Edinburgh, I spent hours wandering the city, stalking a green one I desperately wanted to tae a picture of.  When they started appearing in Los Angeles a couple years ago, again I stalked them, less for pictures than just to look at them and smile.  It's not just their smallness -- they somehow look confident -- they remind me of a small terrier hanging with the big dogs, all the cuter for not seeming to know that it's tiny.

Another oddness about them is the way so often in Los Angeles they seem to have two people in them -- the maximum capacity.  Maybe it's fuel economy, but I like to think it's because, like me, other people love the little cars. 

Now all I need is to find someone with one to drive me around.  Though it's probably not a good idea to try and get arrested, even in Beverly Hills.

From The Guardian - Paul Antonio

 In case you've surfed in here wondering how wonderful calligraphy can look, I'm posting some links to a story by Jon Henley published in Saturday's Guardian about calligrapher Paul Antonio.  As wonderful as the article is, the slide show that goes along with it is even more amazing, if for no other reason than getting to see his studio full of pen pots. (Paul Antonio's very good looking too. Yum.) 

From the article: Calligraphy is an exacting craft, demanding historical knowledge, a highly developed aesthetic sensibility and a dexterous hand – which may be why, despite legions of hobbyists, there are maybe 50 full-time professional scribes working in Britain today.

Me?  I'll be happy to be considered a hobbyist. Though to be honest, sometimes I do have fantasies about somehow being able to make a living at something so enjoyable. 

Next semester's calligraphy class is in copperplate.  That sounds exciting too.

Struggling

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.  

Simplicity and the Student Scribe

 I've finally gotten back into practicing calligraphy (the fact my dad was staying out of town this weekend is likely connected to my returned focus).  For the past couple of days I've both had stuff I've wanted to blog here and have also been practicing lettering.  What's happened is that I've done the calligraphy and left the blogging to now, just keeping the practice album up-to-date.  Our apartment seems to be getting re-organized and cleaned room by room.  It's amazing the amount of weird stuff we were saving -- including cardboard boxes and odd bits of outmoded technology.  Purging things is hard for me, but once I start it feels so good I don't want to stop.

Here's an odd fact though -- my motivation to get the house organized seems connected to practicing calligraphy.  Further, the cleaning and organizing has moved outward from my calligraphy "studio" (as a friend pleases me by calling it)  into the restof the apartment.  I've organized (and now try and keep tidy) our entire bedroom (which means keeping up on laundry since otherwise it takes over the floor).  My dad moving in prompted me/us to re-organize the bathroom and guest room.  This weekend we worked on the box room / technology closet.  Having things organized has me feel a bit more centered (always a good thing).  

 Getting organized required a bit of shopping, prompting us to brave both Costco and IKEA on a weekend.  We got an amazing deal on a great set of chrome storage shelves (for the closet) at Costco for less than $28.  They're amazing because despite the low price they don't suck and each shelf can supposedly hold 350 lbs. Nonetheless, Paul and I have not tried sitting on one together in order to test this claim. It does seem to be doing a great job holding stuff.  At Ikea we found new bedside lamps (whose glow adds to the general peaceful feeling of my bedroom studio), curtains and a recycle bin.  All are much nicer than I'd have expected, given the price.  The lamps and curtains combined didn't cost half what one of the lamps I'd been eyeing at Pottery Barn for the same purpose

Something you may have noticed when looking at the most recent Tinies is the addition of rather shaky Gothic capitals.  I'll blog more about last Monday's class later (Deann has an entry about it up on her site), but in addition to going over our recent homework, taking us down from a 5mm to 2 1/2mm nib, and discussing the coming illumination project, she also introduced capitals.  The reason wasn't that we're really advanced enough, but rather that class is being cancelled by two Monday holidays in a row and she wanted us to have a chance to practice with the capitals.  On the "K is for Kate" I'm experimenting with using a reddish brown ink for the "K" and "Kate" but as the ink is thinner than the black, I'm not sure how it works out.  Like most of my lettering practice, it looks a lot better photographed than it does in person.

Coming Illumination Project

Our big assignment for the Gothic course is to produce a 60-80 word sheet of illuminated text.  The text can be a quotation from any period, but Deann expressed a strong desire we choose something from the appropriate period (about 1100-1500 AD).  I don't want to do anything Biblical because, well, I don't.  So I'm considering some passages of Dante, Chaucer (though probably not Chaucer) and also some quotations by William of Occam.  Doing it in Latin would be cooler, but given that I leave letters out all the time when writing in English, who knows how many time I'd have to re-write it to make sure I got the Latin right?

We got supply list for the project so another bit of the weekend shopping involved a trip to Dick Blick's in West LA.  I love going there.  It's always well organized and stocked (unlike, for example, Pearl) and the staff are friendly and helpful.  I left the store some $130 poorer, but with everything on my list plus a few other toys.  It's my plan to write an entry tomorrow about the tools I'm using so I'll save my shopping finds to discuss there.  

(Guest modeling by Carrots and Small Bear.)