Kilian’s work is epitomized by classical simplicity with an underlying tension within every letter. Beginning with classical forms then moving on to modernising these using ligatures, reversals and other capital forms we will create a piece of work in graphite or coloured pencil.
This was our final one-day workshop in Johannesburg.
We began with working with looking at entasis in versals to work out where to use more or less pressure in letterforms and then copied a piece of work by Herman Kilian in pencil. This was followed by a study of Kilian ‘s ligatures and letterforms. Everyone also created their own ligatures and shared them with one another.
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Studies of ligatures |
The next project was to do a composition in a circle of a name – this is quite challenging to make it legible from left to right and fill the design space well. After that some people worked with more complex designs using a phrase, while others did variations on the name design. I hope to be able to show some of the finished pieces at some stage!
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