Lilo's February letters

My letters are done on Yupo paper which is an Asian paper 100% Polypropylene. It does not absorb watercolor and thus you can shove the paint around. You can also remove all color by wiping off with wet rag and start again. I find it lots of fun to play with. . . Once you have finished a painting you must spray it with a fixative to save it.

Lilo Meany

Jim's catching up letters...

In an another life I spent 14 yrs working in places like Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide as a graphic designer.
Before Letraset or computers to depict a letter you had to paint or draw it.
I had loved calligraphy at art school, however being left handed my ‘thicks’ were often misplaced.
The short of this is that I love lettering and letter form in general hence my involvement in this worthy project.
Having a reputation for tackling things from the ‘wrong’ perspective I am probably not sticking to the ‘letter’ (pardon the pun) of the law.
All my letters fit into a 7cm X 7cm space.
As I am considering my final presentation I have put them all on bigger squares because I like the space, or simply because the paper already had something on it that worked with my letter.
As a graphic designer I am accustomed to search all relevant possibilities which means I may appear to be jumping all over the place using different ideas and techniques ... and I am.
Moving from collage to watercolour to pen & ink etc..
I am fascinated by the minimal and find the spaces between letters speak volumes and may within the 7 X 7 space, become the letter or part thereof.

Sue's first letters - Jan & Feb

I was inspired by Mieke's photos of the peephole of her Kiln. I wrote to her to ask if I could use the image to develop this very rounded free script, I called them  Kiln Peephole letters!   Warm regards, Sue in South Africa.

Pam's four for February

I hope to have a better photo soon...but in the interim here we are!

Letter D - a built up overly and wash technique
Letter F - a background of gold & silver crayons and watercolours and letter written with a ruling pen and Sumi ink
Letter G - I am now attending a watercolour class which is great but I am going to end up with a lot of colour swatches so I'll have to find ways to put them to good use. So a dirty wash applied to this yellow one and "G" written with a ruling pen whilst still wet.
Letter S - the non-obvious part to this letter is the charcoal area which is eyeshadow that I spilt all over the dressing table. It was very nice to use!

Gemma's February Letters

To my February letters I have added some bleed-proof white dot work. I apologise for the quality of the images. My scans were not much better.

Mariella's February letters

I am keeping faithful to the "Tropical Caribbean Naïve Festival
of Colors", TCNFoC from now on. These are the colors, a little
exagerated, that distinguish the houses in our coastline and in
almost all the Caribbean islands.Many of them are white, though.
I used gel pens, gouache, pastel, acrylic copper and Prismacolor
pencils and Mitchell nibs.
I am using Fedrigoni Avorio paper, 220grs. from the
Fabriano paper factory.  Sorry for being late........

Hugs to all of you.

February letters from Helen

Here are my next 4 letters. You cannot really see them properly due to difficulties photographing them, but they are done. The 'g' has a very tiny, detailed drawing of an eye in it and the 'h' has very fine patterning. I seem to be getting more whimsical as I go along. These four are advanced doodling really, but I enjoyed myself immensely. I am staying with pencil and embossing but am exploring further ways of using them together and exploring any possibilities I can come up with. Thanks everyone for your comments - a big thrill- and will try and post some comments myself now Fiona has kindly helped a novice with instructions.

HEATHER'S FOUND ALPHABET

All letters mounted on handmade, recycled paper from Primrose Park, Sydney. Stuck to left-over invitations cut to 7cm.



Letters made from objects found by me on my morning walks...... found by the side of the road...... or from my sewing box.  Various materials (the materials should be obvious so I won't list them).

Elaine's February 4

Week 5.            E -  EW

Machine stitching, with and without thread, and hand stitching on black textured card.

Week 6.            H -  EW

Silver paper and red tissue paper on black textured card.

Week 7.             P -  EW

Silver foil and red tissue paper pasted onto black card. While still wet a palette knife was used to ‘write’ the letter through the layers. 

Week 8.            I -  EW

Sequins, beads and thread on black card.

Ann's for February

Before beginning my journey of letters I had to consider the end result, What am I going to do with them?...Settling with an idea in mind I then considered the colour combination as this was very important..26 squares and I needed 28 so the inclusion of an Exclamation and Question mark was included to balance my finished project....I am and will continue with Gouache on Archers.Love that medium.

Ann S.

Still doing the Experiential thing.......

Well I feel like I am all over the shop but it would look a little contrived if I had letters in order doing it experientially. I am still not completely focussed and feel that the true letters and thoughts will be revealed in the second alphabet but this series feels organic and I am OK with that. I don't know how a watercolour can be organic but I think it is.

Making marks on metal for February

I have been hammering away and putting marks on metal creating my four letters for the month of February. I have given fuller descriptions of each of the letters as I have gone along so won’t bore you all by repeating details here.

As you can see I am sticking to my foldforming and stamping. Because E, F and H are straight line only letters they are created by folfldforming; whereas curvy G required the stamped approach. Whilst 22 letters of the alphabet include straight lines, 15 have only straight lines. So there are going to be 15 foldformed letters and 11 others.

The ALaW challenge is giving me the opportunity to develop foldforming skills – but as you would read in my post for the H it is just as easy to tear brass sheeting as it is paper - if one is a bit heavy handed that is.

Fiona's Four for February

It has been a busy month; but also one filled with this little project.  I have really enjoyed working with these different materials - my challenge for the year being to experiment with materials and methods I don't usually play with.

My "E" uses aluminium shim. I then used a ballpoint embossing tool to draw the letter and decorate it.
My "F"  looks like leopard skin! I wanted to use a cut-out approach and ended up writing lots of little "Fs" on black paper then cutting out the letter "F" from the lovely top paper  and having the little "Fs" show thru.
My "G" was another experiment - working with silk organza that I had rusted, then stitching the outline of the "G" in metallic gold thread and securing it to card which had gold thread wrapped around it.
My "H" was a rush job when all other thoughts had proven fruitless.  In the end, I used oil pastels on metal, covered it with copper leaf and then pulled the "H" out using a sharp pointy tool. I wanted it it to look free and easy without pulling all the copper off.

More details of the adventures with each letter are over on my paperponderings blog

Kim Schoenberger's ALaW - EFGH

Just getting these in the nick of time! Life duties dominated this month... and my rust hunts were limited so I had to take to my faithful stock pile to compile most of February.

Welding of these letters to the mesh has been a nightmare, the fragile nature of the mesh pitted out upon welding so I've needed to take a different approach as to how I attach each letter. Some letters I have welded and I guess some components will still need the use of a welder, but majority will now be attached by using a rusted wire tied at the back.

E - is a weathered brass bracket nuts intact with a welded nut and bolt placed in the centre,

F - welded on, with discarded plugs from cut out metal,

G - a rusted bike chain...still abit of movement under all the rust... shaped nicely,

and

H - a small clamp, not sure from what...with the spring...de-sprung.