Category: lettering

… ’tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free …

… done late last night on “vellum” — left overnight to dry

“Creativity is a kneaded eraser. The first time you pick it up it’s really hard and stiff. The more you use it, the more flexible and elastic it becomes.”
— Anne Merydith-Wolf (a February 24, 1997, post on a calligraphy list)

In case you’re wondering, “Couldn’t she do a little better than that?” Well, yesterday the answer was a resounding “No.” A small sample of the evidence is shown below:

Block or cursive Q? This straddles the line.

“These sudden inspirations never happen except after some days of voluntary effort which have appeared absolutely fruitless and whence nothing good seems to have come, where the way taken seems totally astray. These efforts have not been as sterile as one thinks; they have set agoing the unconscious machine and without them it would not have moved and would have produced nothing. — Jules Henri Poincare, nineteenth-century mathematician, who wrote a descriptive account of his creative processes called “Mathematical Creation” in 1908

↑ Another reminder as to why I’m Designing Something Every Day.

Here is why I am doing these letters every day:
“I learned … that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.” — Barbara Ueland