Calligraphy & more — the studio of Beth Lee, Redmond, WA
I’m finishing up a small set of manuscript books begun last year. I still had a couple of text blocks to do, and this sheet was done to get back into the space of these letters. Although the book lettering is being done with Speedball B series nibs, I used a brush pen for this sheet, and it was so enjoyable I rather wish I had done the series with a brush.
I’m not making much progress with brush lettering, so this will be the last post of brush lettering for awhile. Still, I’ve enjoyed it but I don’t see that I’m accomplishing much. I’ll be thinking about that in the meantime.
One of the brush pens ran out of ink and I didn’t have a brush refill (having accidentally ordered the extra-fine tip, which is more like a flexible drawing point). So, using my jewelry-making-size pliers, I pulled off the brush tip … and the base of the brush tip … and the stem inside that … and the base that the stem fit into. Then I squirted some Pelian 401 ink into the barrel using a thick needle-less syringe that was perfect for the job. Then put it all back together and tried it out at the bottom of the page. Interesting. As I wrote, next time: remember to wear rubber gloves. My cuticles will thank me for it.
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When practicing, I try to be in the moment. But afterwards, it’s a good thing if the left brain kicks and tells me what’s good, what’s bad, what I need change next time. Otherwise, it’s just repetition, repetition, repetition.
More brush lettering, not copying a page anymore, but trying to copy the approach … in an optimistic effort to achieve some brush wisdom.
Today I returned a Carl Rohrs workbook that I had a borrowed from my friend Rose several (or more) months ago. Rose had been doing some brush lettering earlier, and we got to talking about the challenges of brush lettering, trying different tools, talking about that luscious dragging-the-bristles-around-the-arc thing that Carl does … the usual thing that happens when you’re standing in someone’s studio and there’s pen/brush, paper, and paint out on the table 🙂
Anyway, I kept thinking about it as I finished running errands. When I got back to my studio I opened up the Carl Rohrs workbook that I own and started copying a page of lettering he provided. I treated it like a contour drawing, not looking much at the paper but trying to feel the shape and speed and gesture of the letters. During some part of the exercise I realized that not even the letters were registering, much less the words, and I only later realized that some figures were Roman numerals, for instance. I like this kind of practice, and plan to continue it for at least a little while.
P.S. If you saw this side-by-side with the workbook page, you would probably be surprised at how little they resemble one another. For one thing, I skipped and duplicated and re-tried things as I went. For another, I didn’t duplicate the line leading, naturally crowding the leading as is my wont.
One of the really difficult parts about cleaning out my studio is figuring out what to do with all those bits of experiments that I’d like to develop further. A few cases in point:
And finally, in case you were wondering whether I’m still doing daily alphabets …
As always, click on an image for a closer look.
I dug out an old paste-painted paper that seemed appropriate for this Rumi poem. No planning, which left me with no margins. No guidelines, except that the paper is a laid paper. I like working without a net sometimes, and I decided to do this the same day I gave it, so it’s not like I had a choice, is it? The surface was somewhat plastic-y where the paint was thick, and therefore a little difficult to write on with a #4 Mitchell nib.
I always try to do the homework I’ve assigned. In this bookhand calligraphy class, part of the homework this week is to do work with the following specific intentions:
In the above 2 examples, my intentions were roughly as follows (I should have made notes — and let that be a lesson to you students!):
It’s hard to switch from compressed to expanded without warming up. I also noticed that once I expanded the width of the letters I had to fight to keep the pen angle as steep as it had been for the compressed lettering.
Of all the major hands, I’m least confident about blackletter. This is copyfitting and practice for a personal project.