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Monday 19 December 2011

Christmas is nearly here

the front of the card 
and the back
This was printed on my old hp deskjet, trimmed a little so the illuminated letters sat squarely in the section, gilded on the diamonds and then folded into 8, cut in the middle and then glued. The whole production has taken about 2 weeks!

gilding in progress

Monday 10 October 2011

Family Tree


Just completed a family tree which has inspired me to get back to producing my own. Had to photograph this one on the iPad as my digital camera had stopped working but after taking the back, front and sides off I managed to take a couple of new photographs including this one of the work so far on the Heraldry which has taken a bit of a back seat recently.


Sunday 11 September 2011

Back to the heraldry


Finally got to the end of a load of invitations to add names to - some very famous names included - but frustrating in that the space for some very long names, mostly couples, was rather narrow. People don't realised that calligraphy is not like computer fonts - you can't write at 8pt size - or at least I can't!


 So a bit of time to go back to the heraldry, last looked at before Easter. This is just a piece to show what I think I can do! I chose to rework the Oxford City Arms as being a member of Oxford Scribes it seemed relevant and looked an interesting achievement of arms - have to admit to going off it a bit now, green beavers and black elephants with fleur-de-lis are not easy to draw, not to mention the gold chain! This is an early rough.


 I have used the same bit of tracing paper to copy a reduced version of the original artwork (9o%) and the outline of the decorative border. This is going to have more gold chains, fritillary flowers - common around Oxfordshire and some of the University shields.


 Persevering with the quill - or rather three different quills I wrote out a practise piece which has been ruled up on Arches paper...


 and then felt ready to tackle the stretched vellum...


 but made the common calligraphers mistake of leaving a whole line out 5 rows before the end of the description of the arms. So I had to take out the last five lines.....


and then decided that the lettering wasn't nearly sharp enough and I might as well take the whole lot out.....


still rubbing.....

Thursday 25 August 2011

Autumn jobs


 a short pause in calligraphic projects to string onions, shallots and make plum jam
well you may not be able to see the difference but I am happier with this one!

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Classes starting this September

New course starts 19 September 2011 - We meet on a Monday afternoon so those with children can collect them from school after the class. The room is set up for teaching calligraphy with lots of books and other visual resources. Some of the group will be working towards the CLAS Intermediate Diploma and others will hopefully work on a group project with Christmas in mind at the end of term

More trials

Call me a perfectionist but I am going to have to do this again - I like the colours but it is too squashed at the bottom right. This is actually about half the size of the last one on A3 paper.

Monday 15 August 2011

Back from Sunderland

Inspired by working with Thomas Ingmire and David Annwn, I am trying to complete a piece that I started in my week away. So far am on version 4! the poem is called Night Column and there are hidden animals in the text - I have found 10 - can you find any more?

We were greeted with bumper crops of sweet peas, courgettes and plums on our return from holiday - a pause in calligraphic efforts, to make jam, is called for now