The past few days’ daily lettering have been all about uncials, particularly one old exemplar that is unlabeled except for “late XII England”.
Uncials – daily lettering
Scintillate, Scintillate book edition is finished!
I am so pleased that I have finally finished the last of Scintillate, Scintillate, a variable edition of 12 manuscript books. I finished the first nine back in October. You can see a photo of one of the books, open, here.
Bagatelle #1
I recently posted this bagatelle on Instagram. It’s one of a series of daily useless writings made up of leftover paint and discarded papers. I’ve been making these as an antidote to the several long projects that I’ve been working on for what seems like forever. I can see the light at the end of this tunnel … but for now I’m still in the tunnel.
When the pianist isn’t needed much …
… the pianist will play at something else. At a 6-hour stage rehearsal of “Kiss Me, Kate” the other night, I was happy to have brought along a package of Fudebiyori metallic brush pens (straight out of the mailbox) and a pad of Strathmore Artagain paper. The metallic sheen is fairly subtle in person, but not as subtle as this shows it to be. The colors look great on black.
quick brown fox : minimum :: abecedarium : kerning
As “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is considered to be the quintessential abecedarium, so “minimum” is the stock word for practicing letter spacing. Here the challenge was to change the style each line while keeping each line as consistent as possible. Difficult! Here were the styles/rules I had in mind on each line:
- foundational connections and proportions with flat base;
- foundational connections with classic two-part triangular serif at top and rounded exit strokes at bottom;
- gothicized italic with flattened horizontal-ish exit strokes (copy of Edward Johnson’s version);
- a rather softened style of blackletter;
- a hybrid of bookhand and italic which requires a pen-angle change on the branching, with exaggerated pen-angle stops at the base;
- italic with a very low branch point;
- uncial;
- springy italic with increasingly
erraticum, unrestrained gestural strokes.
practicing one script : working/playing in this manner :: practicing a straight scale : improvising a Hanon exercise using a jazz scale and syncopated rhythm
Happy New Year 2020!
Work in process
About 6 x 8 in, #4 Mitchell nib.
Scintillate, Scintillate – a variable edition of 12 manuscript books
I learned this sesquipedalian version of the old children’s poem,
“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, as a child, and it has always been a
favorite. This is a simplified version of an in-progress edition of artist
books. 4 in x 7.25 in.
Dr. Martin’s metallic and white inks on Arches Cover Black text,
folded to make the panorama book presented in Hedi Kyle’s book, The
Art of the Fold. Black cloth covered hard covers, with endpapers from
a dwindling hoard of Black Ink metallic marbled papers from 1990s.
The spacer bar is covered, laminated book board, added to square up
the thickness of the book.
Editions book 9, 10, 11, and 12 will be available for sale soon.
Daily lettering – Thoreau quotation
Home again, and lettering again
Home again, after a month in Japan. And back to daily lettering practice.