Work in Progress

I am working on piece for the SSI Lay Members' Day exhibition. 

The poem 'Kingfisher' appealed to me because I regard the occasional views of a kingfisher on our local stream as very special. You can never count on seeing one but if you always stop and just look for a while you may just catch sight of one. I took my camera with me and recorded some shots of the places I have seen the kingfisher in recent weeks

 

then I played with some of them on the computer and iPad with Photoshop using artistic filters

 this is the view I used for the background, simplified with the filters to softer areas of colour

 I tried looking at this view of a side stream too but the water was going away from me and I wanted the flash of the kingfishers flight to cross the screen

I tried this view too further upstream (a different kingfisher is seen on this part of the river)

and blocked in some text on Photoshop, just to try out some spacing

Then using a board that had a sheet of cream Canson paper already stretched on it I started to experiment with the background. I used a lot of FW ink and clingfilm effect and then added some sepia ink with bubble wrap on another layer - then decided it wasn't working and painted over it all with Plaka. The aim was (fortunately) to create a waterproof background that I could write on.

the background was still too dominant so I put a layer of pastel powder 

over it before I wrote the poem out and added a streak of turquoise gouache. 

I was quite happy with it and cut it off the board.

 then I tried it again on piece of black Ingres paper which worked a bit better ...so...

I decided to wash the writing off the background and start again!

quick pause to make a valentine card

then it will be back to drawing board!

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

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.

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.....

Calligraphy has its uses!

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!

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