The Hi-Tec-C pens are ultra fine and the Coleto system allows you to create your own multi-pen from the large selection of colors available. Thanks for the Suggestion Ana!
The Uni-ball Pocket Brush was a huge surprise to me when I first started writing with it. I expected it to be similar to a typical synthetic brush that I was used to but it is much more rigid and snappy. It feels great to write with and I look forward to using it more.
The Zebra Mini Mechanical Pencil is very slim, nicely weighted, well made and it fits perfectly in my wallet. Now I’m never without a pencil!
Ok, so it’s totally embarrassing how long it’s been since I’ve posted. Umm……. Sorry?
Teaching took up more time than I expected (more on the awesomeness of my class later) and we just bought and moved in to a house (yeah, like real grown-ups!). Class is over and I’m all settled in now so 26 Symbols is back with a vengeance!
The makin’ of the letters hasn’t stopped in the down time. In fact, it’s improved if anything. I recently finished a series of classes at work taught by an incredible lettering artist. It was just the “back-to-basics” type of instruction that I needed! It focused on developing a basic italic and a good structure to your letters. We covered mono-line pencil, flat pen, brush, and crow-quill. I have lots more to post from the class.
The wood texture is from the hardwood floors in our new house showing through the tracing paper. I’m trying to get my work on paper to digital faster so I’m experimenting with shooting them with digital camera rather than scanning them. The wood texture was just a cool bonus! What other backgrounds could I play with? Grass, brick, sky? hmmmm…
I’m very excited to be resuming the regular postings… thanks for checking in. stay tuned.
I’ve decided it’s time to put some structure behind my crazy lettering so I’m going back to fundamentals. I’ve been focusing on drawing skeleton (or monoline) capitals. This will help me create better forms when I loosen back up.
This example however, is a casual interpretation of skeleton capitals.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be teaching Lettering and Font Design at my alma mater, KU starting January 17th. This is going to be a incredible experience and learning opportunity for me and I can’t wait to get started. The postings have slowed down as I’ve been getting prepared for the class but should pick back up once I settle in.
Update: My students are doing amazing work! Watch out font world!
Here’s the first results of my little experiment. the shakiness is due to the screen recording software tracking my mouse movement. So this is kinda like if you just held a pen in the middle of a page and someone moved the paper around to make the letters . I’ll see about turing the mouse tracking off for the next one. Not too shabby though.
Update: I switched it from YouTube to Vimeo and the quality is much better.
So, this is a new experiment I’m trying out. I want to sync lettering to music lyrics in real-time. I slowed down the music to play at 15% the normal rate and lettered (poorly) in Illustrator along with the words. I then sped up the lettering animation to match the rate of the song. The challenge is to letter at the right speed so it looks like the words are appearing as they are being said without having to do any editing. This is a very very crappy test of what I eventually hope to get. Now I just need to get the lettering synced with the music, memorize the lyrics (I thought I had… oops) and make it more interesting somehow. I think it looked better when I zoomed in and the lettering got bolder and filled more of the screen. More (and hopefully much better) to come. The song is Sky Blue Sky by Wilco.
This is a folded pen I made out of the tab of a Dr. Pepper can. Originally I wasn’t too happy with the results so I put it away for awhile. However, I tried filing it to smooth the edges following Peter Thornton’s advice on using folded pens and now it’s a fairly useable tool. I’ve been practicing with it for about a week now and I quite enjoy the unpredictability of it. The ink that worked best for me was walnut ink—a dry powder derived from peat that you mix with water. This watery consistency made for a consistent ink flow but also created some neat joining of strokes exiting out of a letter or where paths crossed. the ink remained wet on top of the paper for a few moments allowing for it to be pushed around.
I recently participated in a workshop taught by English calligrapher, Peter Thornton. It was a wonderful experience and I learned a ton. Peter filled the class with equal parts humor and great lessons.
Two out of the three workshop days were focused on the painted letters of German calligrapher, Adolf Bernd.
Bernd did these lovely watercolor letter paintings for over twenty years during his retirement until his death in 1994. We took inspiration from his work and applied it to our own.
This is one of my more successful pieces from the workshop.
And I did these just for fun.
Very cool, however, it seems that it’s actually drawing the letters rather than making them with a series of single strokes with a broad edge nib. So it’s not much more than a glorified digital printer. But don’t tell that to the robot.
You’re safe, human calligraphers… for now.
via Hoefler & Frere-Jones
This fat, experimental alphabet was done in Illustrator using my Wacom tablet. I created a calligraphic brush with these settings: Angle 30º, Roundness 50% and Diameter 300pt with Pressure Variation set to 300 pt. I wanted to see what a brush with a huge range of pressure sensitivity would do. Here you can see the skeleton strokes that created the letterforms.
The overall shape it took was unintentional at first as I abandoned all attempts at maintaining consistency and began to grow the letters line by line. I just decided to go with it after the first few lines.
I used a Brause broad-edge nib and black Sumi ink on the chipboard back cover of a sketch book for this one. Oh yeah, and a bit o’ Photoshop of course. This is the original scan.
Ghoulish Glyphs has been fun. I look forward to doing it again next year.
This is one of my Dad’s favorite lines from the hilarious Mel Brooks film, Young Frankenstein. The full quote is actually;
Inga: Werewolf!
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Werewolf?
Igor: There.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: What?
Igor: There, wolf. There, castle.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Why are you talking that way.
Igor: I thought you wanted to.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: No, I don’t want to.
Igor: Suit yourself. I’m easy.
. I’ll see about turing the mouse tracking off for the next one. Not too shabby though.
