Category: something else

Everything is blooming here — the camellias, the tulip magnolias, and the azaleas. Here’s a double-bloom camellia that’s blooming by the front walk. I used the Magic Wand in Photoshop to get rid of the background. I know this is a basic procedure in Photoshop, but today I finally figured out the various parts of the Magic Wand, and made a GIF with a transparent background too. Well, it looked transparent before I uploaded it, anyway. Now it’s just a white background, instead of a transparent one.

Here’s the original photo, cropped a little.

This week the latest issue of Letter Arts Review arrived in my mailbox. (I was on my way to the gym when I got the mail, so those 45 minutes on the elliptical machine just flew by.) I was especially interested in the new series article, “Scribbler to Scribe”. In this first article, Glen Epstein and Gwen Weaver remembered the beginning impulses that led to their years of calligraphy. There were three images for each of them: a recent piece of calligraphy, a beginning piece of calligraphy, and a picture of the scribbler about the time the early calligraphy was done.

So I got to thinking. And yesterday I started a new version of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, the text of one of the first finished pieces I ever did, back in 1983. I’ll be interested to see the 1983 version next to the 2006 version. Here’s the 1983 version.

I look at this piece and think – hey, not too bad for a beginner. But it’s clear that even as a beginner I was willing to go through some torture to get the results I want: the copy fitting for this piece had to have been really time-consuming. By contrast, this time around I used the computer to help with the layout. I wrote out the main text in a regular block of text, then scanned it in. Then in Photoshop Elements I created a circle shape and cut and pasted the bits of text until the circle worked. (I’m leaving out those lovely wooden swashes this time around.)

Click on the thumbnail for a closer look.

Here’s where I am right now on it. And it’s about this point in a piece that I generally wonder whether I’m just masochistic or what. I mean, why decide to do all the lines in frisket? What was I thinking?? It’s like trying to write with a rubber band that keeps stretching and breaking. And the pen has be cleaned every 2 or 3 minutes. But the white lines are the unifying style of the piece, which is what was lacking on the previous 7 attempts.

And then I do the washes and I have to leave the studio to avoid messing with it too soon — I want to see what it “really” looks like with the frisket off.

That actually why I’m posting this right now, to try to avoid put the color on the grapes too soon …

Click on the thumbnail for a closer look.

Well, the end-of-year chores are done, my shoulder is healing nicely, and I’m finally back to working on calligraphy. It’s nice to be back.

I’m currently working on a long overdue gift commemorating a trip made back in summer of 2004. I’ve been working on it all week. I’ve started this piece about 8 times, and always the basic design was too flawed to continue, but now I’ve got something that will work. It will be done tomorrow.

And a second painting, with a more limited palette.

Another version of a quote I’ve done many times.

I’ve been tagged by Toni to list 5 little-known facts about myself. I started an artistic response, but I’ve just got too many other projects in the works to finish it. Here are my 5 plain-text facts:

1. About 3 years ago my son and I took up playing the accordion. Logan began taking lessons, and because we’d bought a couple of accordions through eBay, I began playing with him. It’s a ridiculously fun activity. Our main influences are a Cajun fiddle player who also plays the concertina and taught at the Suzuki Institute in New Orleans 3 years ago — and Weird Al Yankovic.
2. My favorite dog we’ve ever had is a 9-year-old Leonberger named Ponce. (When he was 10 weeks, old, we thought it would be cool to be call him “Ponce the Leonberger.” Haha.) He has bone cancer, and has just beat the vet’s estimate of 2 weeks left to live. I’ll be sad when he’s gone. I’m sad already.
3. When I was a teenager I had a chance to tour Europe with an operatic group as their harpsichordist. Instead I went to college to study accounting. Go figure.
4. I was in my mid-twenties before I had a clue that there is another kind of lox besides the liquid oxygen that’s used as a propellant in rocket fuel. I grew up in Merritt Island, Florida; NASA takes up the northern part of the island.
5. We have a 14-rank pipe organ in our living room. Some people have boats or antique cars. We have unusual musical instruments.

That’s it. If I’d been blogging a little longer, I might know some fellow bloggers I could tag. Maybe in a few months.

Here in north Florida, chameleons must have a fatal attraction to my studio. I’m constantly finding that they’ve slipped in, and although I try to help them back out the door, every once in awhile I find that one has come in died of dehydration, I guess. I hate when that happens, so I’m constantly on the lookout for chameleons.

This little creature on my work sink kept catching my eye. A second glance would show it to be the overused and rusted-out pipe cleaner that I use to clean my glass eye droppers. After the 20th double-take, I took a photo of it and then threw it out.

I’m thinking about manuscript books. Why?
When I first became interested in calligraphy – this was in the early ‘80s – there were very few books on the subject. Looking through my bookcase, I see some favorites that remain the cornerstone of my education in calligraphy. They all include some instruction on the design and execution of a manuscript book.

The calligraphy classic The Calligrapher’s Handbook (updated in 1985) includes book design in two of its eight sections.

Marie Angel, who was a miniature painter as much as calligrapher, includes book design in two of the ten sections of her book entitled The Art of Calligraphy (1977).

And Ann Camp devotes 20 of the 82 pages of her book Pen Lettering (originally published in 1958) to the design and preparation of a manuscript book. She explains that the student should make a small manuscript book because: “The writing of a continuous text will provide a better exercise than the planning of a single panel or broadside.”

Lloyd Reynolds, finds space in his 60-page book Italic Calligraphy & Handwriting (1969) to discuss and illustrate the golden section as it relates to book design.

And Friedrich Neuegebauer discusses book design in his inspirational book The Mystic Art of Written Forms (1979). As he puts it, “The crowning achievement of all calligraphic work is THE HAND-WRITTEN BOOK.” (Those are his capitals.)

The persistence of the subject of manuscript books in these classics should be enough encouragement for me to embark on the design and preparation of my own manuscript book.

A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon in the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy and Lettering at the San Francisco Publix Library. Wow! I sat at a long table and the librarian brought me book after book, each hand lettered and hand bound, which I could pick up and leaf through to my heart’s content. After about 4 hours of this, I staggered out of the library with pages of pencilled notes in my journal — a vain attempt to remember even a small fraction of what I’d seen. I had never even gotten to their collection of broadsides.

And yet I have never completed a traditional manuscript book of any length worth mentioning. Why is this? Perhaps the fear that this big commitment of time and energy will be rewarded with failure. Or perhaps the fear that a plain little hand lettered book will turn out not to have been worth the time.

And then I look at a site like The Medieval Bestiary, which links me to The Aberdeen Bestiary, and I’m hooked.

Where I am now in pointed-pen proficiency. I can’t delude myself that I’m any better than this: I just finished addressing about 220 double wedding envelopes. I’m certainly warmed up.

I also hope to one day achieve proper spelling in conjunction with proper writing. I do know how to spell — when I’m not looking at the letterforms themselves.