… from awhile back. It’s a mix-up of turn-of-the-century monogram, ornamental penmanship, and hand-written block letters.
Some wedding invitation address styles
It’s been way too long since I updated my website’s wedding section. In response to several inquiries, shown below is, first, a traditional copperplate hand in white on black. The rest are “modern” lettering styles. These are all wedding addresses. I’ll post some invitation styles soon.
More gold paint
This summer at The Summit at Colorado Springs, I bought a set of Finetec gold watercolors, because everybody had been raving about them. As soon as I got home, I tested them out, on white paper and on black. This photograph doesn’t do them justice, even with an external flash and a diffuser. I’ll try a few more options, and maybe post a better photo later.
They are a new favorite for lettering, especially for broad-edge nibs.
William Henry Channing quotation
A William Henry Channing quotation, done earlier this year.
As usual, click on the thumbnail for a larger image.
Daily lettering – yesterday
Cycling through the Schmincke Calligraphy Gouache colors that make up the 6-color primary palette. Strathmore Drawing 400 paper, #5 Mitchell nib.
Some unfortunate flourishes here. I really lost my way at the end of line 8: I made the flourish and head down toward the waistline when I realized I hadn’t made the x-height portion of the “d”. Dive-bomb landing with no target. Oops. This is what happens when the mind wanders and the hand completely takes over.
Yesterday’s daily lettering
Working out a single-case alphabet, cycling through a double-primary palette of 6 Schmincke Calligraphy Gouache colors, on a section of 100# Strathmore Drawing 400 with a #4 Mitchell nib.
Some earlier daily writing
This page of bookhand was done earlier this month.
Daily lettering, after The Summit
After a great half-week with Ewan Clayton at The Summit, I’m back in my studio with daily lettering practice.
Aldous Huxley quotation
A quotation from Aldous Huxley’s novel, Those Barren Leaves. I picked up and read this book during a recent trip to Israel.
Folded ruling pen and C4 Speedball nib on a sheet of 2010 Diploma Parchment (marked “bad batch” — my newer batch is much better to write on) using Boku-Eki sumi bottle ink.
Guidelines
There are all kinds of ways to make guidelines for calligraphy. Here are some of the ways I do it:
- A Word document. This downloadable Word document prints landscape on a letter-size sheet of paper − x-height of 10 points (a little larger than 1/8″) with a leading of 36 points (about 7/8″) and 35º slant lines. The slant lines are in the header/footer area.
- An InDesign document, which provides more opportunity fine-tuned guidelines. Here is a downloadable PDF from an InDesign document which has many layers of guidelines − slant lines and regular − that I can turn on and off for a variety of combinations. I could have multiple columns, or a shape that breaks up the text, or other complications that don’t work so well in Word.
- I like manually inked guidelines too, especially for large pieces. I use a lining guide, T-square and slantboard for these. John Neal provides instructions for using a lining guide here.
If you don’t want to make your own, you can generate some online at several websites:
- Scribblers has an app that generates guidelines based on ascender, x, descender, and line-space values that you input –
http://www.scribblers.co.uk/acatalog/Guideline_Generator.html - I haven’t used this one, but it looks interesting –
http://noufalibrahim.name/rulings - And another –
http://www.allunderone.org/calligraphy2/calligraphy.php - And this one inspired by Eleanor Winters’ book –
http://www.anomaly.org/debbie/calligraphy/guidelines.html - And one which generates a PDF from your settings
http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/calligraphy/ - Pre-set calligraphy guidelines you can download
http://www.printablepaper.net/category/calligraphy
I used to use Calli-Graphic, a computer app, but it seems to be defunct.