Cinque Ports Scribes meet in various locations in the area of Hastings and Dover. I have given workshops there about 5 or 6 times and have always been warmly welcomed by this very active and talented group of calligraphers. The Art of Adolf Bernd Adolf Bernd combined crisp modern letter forms with decorative elements from illuminated initials. He did not use masking fluid but got a similar effect and with the water colours the outcome was a fresh, very individualised result. We will study his … [Read more...]
White Letter Schwabach
Here is a sample that I designed with Gothic Schwabach, using white letters instead of black letters. I will be teaching some calligraphy in Singapore to a mixed ability group including beginners in April and they want a decorative script, but not Uncials or Gothic! We finally decided on a sort of simplified Italicised Gothic derived from Schwabach. There will be just one day doing lower case including writing in watercolour and one day doing decorative capitals. These were written with a balsa … [Read more...]
Swatches on a postcard
So if you painted 2 strips as shown on Friday, you would be able to make SIX postcards like the ones shown here: These swatches are all 85mm in height, The width is guessed at somewhere between 9mm and 12mm. It is not as important to be accurate. You need between 5 & 7 swatches to show the colour variations. Stick them Scotch Removeable Tape - that special Scotch tape that comes in a blue and black checked box NOT green and black checked box; or blue tack, or just put them in an envelope … [Read more...]
And the winner is…
Pam Horne. Congratulations! Actually it was really tricky. Here are the original swatches. Don't worry if you got them all wrong - the main thing is that you are getting your eye in on neutrals. In due course we'll have a swatch-swop so that everyone can build up their colour ranges. Because the start-off colours in the blues and oranges were more similar the two below were the hardest to guess. Ultramarine and Sienna Indigo and Orange I must confess that I have never played around … [Read more...]
Water-colour-colour competition
The prize is one of my zig-zag swatches with 32 swatches of mixes using Alizarin and Phthalo Green. I've gone on and on about the lovely neutral colours you get by mixing comps. So I thought I'd run a little competition. Here are the neutrals, numbered. Now you have to decide which combination belongs to which number. You will notice that I am not scientific* but that I use any two opposite colours as long as the one approximates the colour is represents - e.g. I decided that Quinacridone … [Read more...]