Formal Uncials

Another half an hour to myself whilst the little one is napping, so I picked up my pilot pens and had a go at formal uncials. This was done with a 2.4mm nib, purple ink and a 4 nib-width x-height.

I used for my reference a section from Gillian Hazeldine's brilliant book Contemporary Calligraphy: how to use formal scripts today.

This is not a script I am at all used to working with, but there's so much you can do with it, with a little bit of creativity.

Where it all began

Having dabbled in Palaeography as part of my postgraduate studies in Music, I was really interested to see a link to this blog pop up on the Twitter feed at work, promoting Medieval and Renaissance handwriting tutorial apps for your phone (Mac or Android). It's more transcription, than history of  handwriting, but really interesting nonetheless!

This says it all really...

New toys!

I have just bought myself a set of 3 Pilot Parallel pens. They're great fun, and absolutely ideal for grabbing and playing around with in the few minutes when my daughter is quiet or napping and I don't have time to set myself up for a long writing session. These were done with the 2.4mm pen and a cartridge of the violet ink that came with the set.

As you can see, we've been celebrating Burns Night!

The final pieces in situ...

I decided to re-do the inside cover for the box in the same copper colour as the other piece. I still haven't managed to find the flow and balance of the flourishes that I had in the original attempt, but the technical execution of the actual writing is much better, so I've decided to go with the new one. It's so difficult to bring it all together in a final piece and do everything to my satisfaction, but I guess that is what will ultimately drive my improvement!

Also, cutting pieces down and mounting them is a considerable pain, especially when you cut your finger with the scalpel and have to avoid dripping blood on your work!

A little something for my Mum

It's my Mum's 70th birthday - we're throwing her a party at the weekend and I've been inspired to get my pens out to do a couple of little pieces for the guest book. After 18 months of no calligraphy I genuinely have no idea how I've survived without it. It's been wonderful to spend the last few days rediscovering my love of Copperplate, and I've really had to struggle to tear myself away from it!

Anyway, here are the pieces - I hope she likes them.

I'm back!

The Scribbling Post is about to be resurrected! After 18 months out due to the birth of my lovely daughter, I have found my calligraphy mojo once more :-) 

Watch this space...

A Cunning Plan (otherwise known as Wedding calligraphy #2)

Actually just a table plan, but I thought a cunning plan sounded more interesting. Back in my post about place cards I mentioned that my pictures of the table plan-in-progress had got eaten somewhere between memory card and computer - I am happy to announce that my husband is a genius and has caused them to reappear from the abyss.

Laid out but not mounted yet.

So, my table plan consisted of 5 tables of 9 all named after various places in One Hundred Acre Wood. After seeing some invites printed and overlaid with vellum paper, I thought I'd use a similar idea and write out the names on vellum paper and mount this over cornflower Khadi paper (the idea being that you could still see the flowers through the overlaid paper). All this mounted on some Ivory Canford card and stuck in a nice frame would look lovely.

I think it did look nice in the end, but writing copperplate on vellum paper is not to be attempted lightly (or if you have a short temper). The trouble is that vellum paper (and we're talking vellum paper, as opposed to proper Vellum here) doesn't absorb ink very well. Or at all, really. If you try and use gouache then the paper crinkles up and you loose the intensity of colour as it dries; if you use ink (I used Moon Palace Sumi ink in the end) it keeps it's lovely intensity but takes a long time to dry. The surface tended to be both skiddy and scratchy all at the same time - in short an absolute nightmare to write on. I attempted most of the tables at least twice, and found it really difficult to control uneven descenders and wobbly ascenders. Persistence, however, paid off and I finally had an acceptable version of each for the finished thing. I have a sneaking suspicion that if you prepare the surface with gum sandarac then writing on vellum paper becomes a lot easier - unfortunately I had neither the time nor the means to experiment with this before needing the finished thing.

Cutting and sticking materials.

Other important equipment for assembling the plan can be seen on the right and include: a putty rubber, a prit-stick, scissors, a soft pencil, double sided tape, a very sharp scalpel + cutting mat (be careful with these!), and a metal ruler.
The nice thing about khadi papers is that they can be torn along the edge of a ruler giving you a nice straight edge, but maintaining the nice ragged, rustic look of the natural edges.




All in all I think it turned out rather well considering I'd never attempted anything like it before, and was really just making it up seat-of-the-pants style. The finished thing, mounted and framed looked like this:

(Photo courtesy of the wonderful Kirsten Hunter)

Aside from the aforementioned trouble with the vellum paper, if I were to do a similar piece again I'd probably double mount the tables with a stronger colour behind the khadi paper (perhaps dark purple or blue), and include a similarly mounted title at the top (either simply 'Table Plan' or the Bride and Groom's names and wedding date) to prevent it looking a little bit on the naked side. We live and learn!

Tomorrow, I'm very excited to be heading into London to attend the CLAS Living Letter IV exhibition: All that Glisters at the Oxo Gallery on the South Bank. It'll also be visiting the Design Centre at Sunderland University, and Bath Central Library over the coming weeks, so do go along if you have the opportunity - it features beautiful works from some of the country's top calligraphers and I am anticipating being truly inspired by their skill (I've had a sneak peak at the catalogue and know I won't be disappointed). I'll report back here once I've recovered!