Roman Cap study

I am still practicing with the Roman caps from my earlier posts. These are written in gouache on Fabriano paper (the combination is nice) using a Speedball #1.

 

muslin painting

Back in November I posted about a couple of muslin paintings and was very excited about it, especially the one with the hearts. So one day a began to write my quote on the heart muslin piece; halfway through it happened. . . . . . misspelling! Darn! So in my panic I thought, the writing is still wet I'll just rinse it off and start over when it's dry. What a mess! The background was painted with watercolors, there was some walnut ink and the new writing was red acrylic. the background was gone; part of the quote remained; argh, nothing but dullness and mud. And there it sat and there I sat. After a few days I decided to pick it up and try to salvage it. I added more background color and stamps and the quote (this time no misspellings). But alas it was still not quite what I had intended.

But I was not going to count it as total loss. I made a signature of 12 watercolor pages, glued the muslin painting to the outside page and sewed it all together with a red ribbon as a pamphlet book. The painting is still disappointing but the book makes me very happy.

 before

 after

Journal

Hope you all are having a lovely Sunday. I sure am. 

Sitting on the couch, enjoying the fire, enjoying being with my family and playing in my journal. 

 

Roman Caps

As promised in the last post, I have been working on studying Ismar David's style of roman caps. In the first sample, the letters have been drawn as in the earlier post. The second sample is my first attempt at writing the letters with a metal nib, Speedball #3. The third sample is a later attempt with a metal nib.

It seems I am quite out of practice after being on vacation for the holidays. I will continue to practice and post again when I have something worthy to share.

NOLAA Calligraphy Exhibit

New Orleans Letter Arts Association has installed a new exhibit at the Denham Springs Library for the month of January. I have several pieces included in the show. The one shown has a great likeness to Ismar David's piece published in the Calligraphy Idea Exchange, Volume One Number Two, 1983.  I have just recently had the opportunity to study this past issue and am enthralled with his Roman Caps and sensual serifs. Up to this point I had no knowledge of Ismar David's work but admire his letterforms and wanted to try and learn more by imitating his piece. Next post I will have a piece of my own with this flavor of style but still have a long way to go to master the Roman Cap.

I created this piece for myself and wanted to share it as an awareness to the the beauty of Mr. David's work. The quote was created on a full sheet of 300 lb Arches Cold Press, written with masking fluid, then several washes of thin acrylic. It was then mounted on a reclaimed window screen.

Happy New Year

Aren't the Sandia mountains located in Albuquerque, New Mexico beautiful!?! They never look the same, depending on the time of day the colors change and move. I love these mountains.

After a wonderful Christmas at home and then a fabulous week in Albuquerque, it's time to get back to business. I wanted to start off the New Year by wishing everyone love and happiness. Here's to a year packed with beauty and creativity all around us.