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.