Helen's second alphabet

At long last I am nearing completion of my second alphabet. It is in the form of a concetina book with pop outs and is titled "being other than letters".

 Seeing Fiona's braille backgrounds, set me to thinking of all the ways letters/ideas can be transmitted other than by an actual letter of the alphabet. Sorting through a lot of candidates, I settled on 3 of what I thought have been the most commonly used - Braille, Morse Code and Naval pennants. Technology in the future will probably render all of these obsolete.

 I hope to overlay the background of these pages with hand-drawn beautiful letters to accentuate the difference between mechanical methods and the beauty and art of shapes drawn by the human hand. As time is going quickly that may have to be another book. As a shortcut, and as I love embossing, I have embossed different styles of letters into the page.

NOELA'S WEEK 21

...the spine with woven embroidery thread binding and black paper tapes.



JGR November

Digital lettering again: Painted the background with acrylics using bright colors and bold strokes for texture.

Scanned into PhotoShop and added letters with drop shadow for depth.
Adjusted opacity settings to get some background peeking through. The texture is bold in some places and subtle in others.
Placement of letters is random.
Thank you for viewing! Have a great weekend.

NOVEMBER from Mieke.

Quince-Rambutan-Oops...Stawberry-Tomato-Ugly fruit.

NOELA'S WEEK 20

Finished book with front cover

negative and positive

I could not help mixing up the soy fibres with bleached cotton for added flavour. I can't wait to put the letters together for the final presentation. The hat is shaping up in the mind more clearly now.

Here are my next two letters. I put a little bit of orange and some yellow in the background colours of the "T" and I really like it! I am finding these letters look better on a dark background.

Behind the Q ball

I talked to Fiona about where I should be up to in my letters and she said Q - so I was 5 letters behind and so have had to do five letters this week. So there they are below.


Barry Smith © M-Q ALAW

I still have to fold the letters yet into their 'bird form'. I thought I'd test to see how the bird forms would look on the wires and rusted iron wedge. The photo below shows a test run of Letters in Flight.

Barry Smith © Letters in Flight1

I think at the end the flock of 26 letters will look OK.

Woodland F - J

My husband, our daughter and I spent the afternoon in the mountains. While my husband cut up fallen trees for our wood stove, Jenny and I took a hike. Later Jenny, with Dad's help and hands, used the chainsaw.

Here is F through J.

Woodland Alphabet

Hello everyone,

I am so behind but I'm finally finishing this alphabet. The letters were "found" or assembled during a July afternoon in the woods in the Rocky Mountain Front, about an hour west from our home in Montana.

NOELA'S WEEK 19

I made a firm cover from matt board and covered it with nice black Nepalese hand made paper then glued the image on top.

Kim Schoenberger - R S

R - Sgrafitto - with brushed on red slip

R is transfered onto the leatherhard clay tile in usual manner. Sgrafitto is generally a technique of scraping back into clay covered with slip, as seen with 'J' . I'm challenging logic with this one, letting go of rules and exploring, which some potters may ask "why?" I guess at this stage of the alphabet it's all about experiementing and I say why not! So instead of applying the slip I've just scraped into the clay body direct then brushed the red slip inside the R imprint and painted the border.

S - Imprint - with organic matter

A bit of fun, not sure what the end result will look like, fortunately I can rescue this if need be after the bisque firing. S transfered with a light pencil imprint as a guide, then wax emulsion applied to outline the letter and the border to act as a resist from the pressed in organic matter and to create a negative space with the letter, hopefully! In theory > the organic matter is pressed imprinting the clay and will burn away in the firing resulting inverted spots and the letter S will be revealed by the smooth surface.

Below is a close up for a clearer view - Quinoa grain is used and burnished in with my Tigers Eye polished stone for securing and reassuring a definite imprint.

NOELA'S WEEK 18

The Cover:

I used a mish mash of all the previous techniques and materials to create an alphabet image for the book cover - blue dyed tissue paper, used teabags, pen, brush and black and white inks, PVA, old book text and paper.

Lettres d'octobre - Letters from october

Bonjour,
Hello,

Les couleurs commencent à changer. J'avais laissé libre cours à l'imagination de Marmotte Numéro Trois qui a décidé que ce serait mieux dans l'ordre des couleurs de l'arc-en-ciel... Qu'à cela ne tienne ! Voici donc les lettres de ce mois... toujours l'écriture Cursive Gestuelle dans son petit carré rougeoyant (on croirait le nom pompeux d'un plat de restaurant...)

The colors begin to change. I had free rein to the imagination of Groundhog Number Three who decided it would be better in the order of colors in the rainbow ... Never mind! Here are the letters of this month ... Always Cursive Gestures in his small glowing square (you'd think the pompous name of a restaurant dish ...)

Et puis les page dans lesquelles cela s'inscrit...

And then the page in which it fits ...

Au moins on commence à pouvoir constater que je connais mon alphabet ;)

At least we see that I know my alphabet ;)

Passez une bonne journée.
Have a good day.

Fiona's letters for October

My how time flies!  Here is my next instalment of embroidered letters on rusted braille paper. I continue to alternate the outlined letters with the filled in ones, and try to add a a slight embellishment in the background without detracting from the paper or the letter.

M: I worked a few french knots into the background.

 N: I outlined some of the braille dots in pencil. Amazing how different light affects the colour of the shot.

O: With such a lovely tide/watermark, I just did tiny silver dot lines around some of the fainter tidemarks

 P: A couple of lines of running stitch in pencil

Enjoy!

December alpha letters

Hooray the alphabet is finished. Just have to work out how to assemble them!

December Letters

Please note the spelling is wrong. Should be Xanthorrhoea but I have always spelt it with a Z and it fitted this alphabet!!!!!!!!

Alphabet is finished.