Calligraphy & more — the studio of Beth Lee, Bozeman, MT
Well, I didn’t get all the goodies from the goody bag put away, and the 50%-off paper I bought at Paper & Ink on the last day of the conference was still out too.
Freely written with a Sakura 3.0mm felt-tip calligraphy marker on Arches MBM paper. I like the skipping quality of the marker. I’m afraid it will start to fill in as the marker ages, but so far it’s still good.
Back in my studio, I’m pleased to have most of my gear unpacked, and the spilled ink cleaned up. And I’m also pleased to get back to a daily lettering practice. In the conference goody bag was a General’s Sketch & Wash Pencil No. 588. When I was unpacking, it caught my eye, so I lettered a page of Strathmore Drawing 400 using it. Then I went back in with a Pentel water brush to see what would happen. I’ll probably do more on it later, but right now the kitchen is calling …
As usual, click on the image for a closer look.
Yesterday I returned from The Passionate Pen in Sonoma County, California. It was a wonderful week seeing old friends and new work, experimenting with new ideas, tools and materials. I was surprised to find myself working with a pointed brush most of the week. I’ll post more about the conference in the days to come, but today I’ll share the page I did in the Oakland airport and on the plane to Salt Lake City. I learned more about “form themes” in Ewan Clayton’s four-day workshop, especially during the study of Hans-Joachim Burgert’s work. On this page, my form theme includes condensed capitals, line leading that is smaller than the height of the letters, and three rogue letters that are not condensed. The choice of three letters changes in each of the three blocks. It was a good way to spend the hours in the airport coming down from the conference.
Bic 0.5mm #2 mechanical pencil on a Strathmore 400 Drawing (heavier weight) sheet about 9×12.
It’s been so hot that I’ve been working in the dining room on the main floor of the house. My studio over the garage is an oven this summer, especially in the afternoons. For the past couple of days I’ve been addressing wedding invitations, which is good from a “venue” standpoint: the tools and materials needed are finite and portable.
Pointed pen is so different from broad-edge pen lettering, that when I switch from one to the other that I must practice to get back in the groove. Shown above are two of the three pages done to prepare for job. For the first page (not shown) I lettered in my default pointed pen script. Because the invitation was printed in Bickham Script, on these two pages I developed a script style that incorporates some of the characteristics of Bickham.
A few Bickahm characteristics I chose to incorporate in my script:
I’m always aiming for a balance between contrasting and complementing the printed invitations. Too little contrast, and it looks like inept printing. Too much contrast, and there is no connection between the addressed envelope and what’s inside.
Today was a big day in US public life, for at least three reasons. First, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Health Care Act in King v. Burwell. Second, it also upheld the right to same-sex marriage in all 50 states. And third, President Obama eulogized Reverend Pinckney, who was gunned down in his church in South Carolina last week.
Today’s daily lettering was a meditation on this inspiring eulogy. I could call it an exercise in improvisational layout, or practicing pencil Roman capitals and pressurizing down strokes. But I often forgot these technicalities while absorbing the text.
All that bicycling in Crete took its toll on my back, but I’ve been soldiering on – most days – on the homework for Peter Thornton’s workshop in Missoula this coming weekend.
Last Friday, page 18: Experimenting with changes in orientation, size, spontaneous layout. (I had to do something about that the horrendously large space in the O, which could have been fixed by wider letter spacing or a narrower O … but wasn’t.) Page 19, done on Friday and Saturday, was an attempt to keep the three main width groups of Romans but condense them all by about 25%. Not a success, except that I learned that it would probably be better to move toward a more consistent letter width at that level of compression. None of the following work: condensation, condensing, condensement.
Yesterday, page 20: I dispensed with guidelines and line leading, experimenting with variations in orientation and size, and trying to get the spaces to “talk” to one another.
I had the honor of making this ketubah for Aaron and his bride Noy. An honor and a pleasure, as I’ve known Aaron since about the time he entered kindergarten. It was a beautiful evening in the foothills of the Judean Mountains.
Last month I was commissioned to write out the Kipling poem “If”. Since 1983 I believe I’ve written this poem out at least once every other year. I don’t always keep an image of the poem, but I do have 3 images here, from 2002, 2007 and 2015. (You can click on the image for a closer look.) I usually do the poem in italic, for several reasons. First, it is very long and so I choose something that flows easily from the pen. Second, it is very long and yet people do want to have it framed; so the lettering must be fairly small. Third, even though, and especially because, it is very long, people want maximum legibility. Fourth, a compressed hand is better than a wider hand because two columns of two verses each makes for a good standard frame proportion. Fifth, even though I think a book hand would be a good choice of lettering style, most people don’t think of book hand as “calligraphy”. {sigh}
That 1984 hand running up the left side looks pretty damn good for someone who had been lettering for less than 2 years. The 2002 version of the first verse looks a lot less attractive. The lettering was much smaller, the paper more difficult for me at the time, the slant was clearly problematic, and I think the stress of getting all that text down on a page with consistency and without errors was still a challenge. In 2007, I was in art school and not doing much lettering, and it shows. In the 2015 version, I spent a good deal of time trying out inks on the paper (see here), and still … my consistency could be improved.
Looking at this montage of lettering from 1984-2015, it’s not particularly clear that I’ve progressed, even though I’ve got to think I’ve learned something in the intervening years. I’m reminded of the a quotation (which I can’t find now) that goes something like: “What is learned after the age of 40 can’t be communicated.” Truth or comforting fiction?
Laboring onward, I got a little off track about line 7 of page 14, but I ended up at the bottom of page 15 back at just monoline Roman capitals with a little pressure and release. I’m ready to break out of the lines soon. Maybe.
These letters are slowly seeping into my kinetic memory. Spacing is still problematic (story of my life), and 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock on O, Q, C, G, D is just not happening with any regularity at all. That area of the circle is like trying to scratch the itch between my shoulder blades: I can get there, but not natural and it’s not elegant.
