Letters for January and February - catching up!

Heaven knows if I am doing this right - having never blogged before!

Alphabet 1
I am currently doing some casual work in a ‘box’ factory and I am always collecting offcuts of paper and cardboard - a calligrapher's heaven!
After one job where I had to strip a diecut shape from cardboard and push out the stencil ‘d’ from the middle, I couldn’t bear to throw out all the little quarter circle shapes – I now have literally hundreds of them! So, I had a thought ... use them to stamp shapes on paper!
Then when I heard about the Letter a Week project I decided to design an alphabet based on a circle created with these little cardboard shapes.

Alphabet 2
Because I want to make a book out of my stencil alphabet I am going to interleave the stencil alphabet pages with a sheets of tracing paper. To make it more interesting, I am writing my second alphabet with a ruling pen, then scanning and printing it onto the tracing paper in grey so the stencil alphabet can be seen under it.
So my two letters (ie Ruling Pen A and Stencil A, etc) are shown overlaid in the one image.









Meg (confuzed)

Letters now a' cookin ...

After having been threatened with instant ex-communication by our Blog Leader if I didn't get my letters in by the end of this month, I have been frantically putting together my three-months-worth of "lettered stacks", and as I write this blog A to L are happily sitting in the kiln slowly getting hotter until in ten hours time they reach 1000 degrees - and have hopefully survived the experience ...







My seven-letter-stacks letters are made out of 'paper-clay' and in size are 7cm cubed. I make the paper-clay out of recycled office paper - which I shred then soak in water ( and a slurp ofbleach to kill any bacteria that might form ) for a month. I then put the paper through a device that pulps it, and then add the pulp to liquid clay ( also recycled ) and let stand for another couple of months. The mixture is then poured onto plaster blocks and left until the clay is ready to work with. I love working with paper-clay as it is so forgiving and enables the artist to create forms and joins that normal clay just couldn't cope with.


A to L stacks ready to be fired ...

The letter-stacks are first fired to 1000 degrees ( bisque ) - then I paint them with a cobalt glaze and fire again to 1080 degrees ... and if all goes well I will open the kiln door next week and there will be 'A to L' in all their blue glory - stay tuned.


Loading my letters into the kiln with June's rats !!! ...

cheers - Ken Munsie

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.

Another week flies past

...and here is my next letter..."F"

....select, flip and clone

This one was a bit tricky. I am running out of different obvious raw material, so I need to be super creative with lots of 'cloning'. I love the variety of letters being posted and the 'real' calligraphy artists are leaving me in awe.

Noela xoxoxo

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!

Lettres de février - Letters from february

Bonjour,
Hello,

Voici donc ma deuxième série... J'ai gardé les mêmes peintures pour rester dans la même gamme de couleurs, mais j'ai continué à chercher des alphabets différents...

Here is my second set ... I kept the same paintings to remain in the same range of colors, but I continued to search for different alphabets ...

Pas facile uniquement dans mon stock... Alors j'ai regardé dans le livre de David Harris, "Calligraphie : cent alphabets", si certains me plaisaient un peu...

Not only easy in my inventory ... Then I looked in the book by David Harris, "Calligraphy: One hundred alphabets, though some I liked a little ...

Et j'ai trouvé une "Capitale carolingienne libre moderne" à la page 64...
And I found a "modern free Carolingian Capital" on page 64 ...

... une "Capitale fraktur" à la page 120...
a Capital fraktur "on page 120 ...

... une "capitale Rotunda à double fût" p 160...
"Capital Rotunda with a double ... " p 160 ... (the translator failed to translate "fût")

... et une "capitale Neuland" p 174...
and a "capital Neuland" p 174 ...

Finalement ce projet m'aura donné l'avantage d'aller feuilleter dans mes livres pour trouver des idées d'alphabets à travailler éventuellement... Ce n'est déjà pas si mal...

Finally this project have given me the advantage to go browsing in my books to find ideas for scripts to work any ... This is not so bad ...

Passez une bonne journée.
Have a nice day.

Callie

Lettres de janvier... un peu en retard - Letters from January ... a little late

Bonjour,
Hello,

En cherchant des blogs de calligraphie, je suis tombée sur votre blog et je me suis dit que c'était une bonne idée pour prendre le temps de calligraphier plus régulièrement... Alors j'ai commencé à essayer de réaliser mes petites lettres... Comme mes compétences en anglais sont déplorables, j'utiliserai un traducteur et je vous prie de bien vouloir m'excuser par avance s'il y a des erreurs.


Looking for blogs calligraphy, I came across your blog and I thought it was a good idea to take the time to calligraphy more regularly ... So I started trying to make my little letters ... As my English skills are poor, I will use a translator, please accept my apologies in advance if there are errors.

Je vais relier les supports ensemble sur un "livret", j'ai donc voulu une "certaine" unité... Alors j'ai bien pensé à garder le même alphabet... ou bien à garder les mêmes couleurs... Mais je me suis dit que sur un livret entier, cela risquait d'être lassant... J'ai pensé également à "que des alphabets différents" ou "que des techniques différentes", mais je me suis dit que je n'en aurais pas assez à mon actif pour 26 lettres... Quant à "que des couleurs différentes", cela posait le problème de manque d'unité de mon livret...

I am connecting carriers together on a "book", so I wanted a "certain" unit ... So I thought well to keep the same alphabet ... or keep the same color ... But I thought that a whole book, it might be boring ... I also thought "that different alphabets" or "that different techniques, but I told myself that I should not have enough under my belt for 26 letters ... As for that "different colors", this posed the problem of lack of unity in my book ...

J'ai donc résolu pour ce premier alphabet de choisir "tous les alphabets que j'avais envie d'essayer ou que j'avais à disposition", de même que les différents outils (plumes courantes ou différentes, pinceaux, calames...) et "une gamme de couleurs brillantes". Rester dans la même gamme de couleurs donnera ensuite une unité à l'ensemble. Si je tiens la distance, je changerai de projet pour le deuxième alphabet.

So I solved for the first alphabet to choose "all the scripts I wanted to try or that I had available, as well as various tools (common or different pens, brushes, arrows, ... ) and "a range of brilliant colors. Stay in the same range of colors will then give a unity to all. If I want the distance, I will change project for the second alphabet.

Semaine 1 : A : Alphabet dessiné. Drawn Alphabet

Semaine 2 : B : Alphabet "Onciale". Alphabet "Uncial"

Semaine 3 : C : Autre alphabet dessiné. Other alphabet drawn.

Semaine 1 : A : Alphabet majuscule "Gothique". Alphabet uppercase "Goth".

Il ne reste que 22 lettres. ;)
Merci
There are only 22 letters. ;)
Thanks
Callie

Reminder about joining A Letter a Week

A quick reminder to those who are following and watching and enjoying all the letters that are appearing here as part of A Letter a Week that we are accepting new players and participants until the end of March.

If you would like to join in and share your letter a week, then please let me know and we can arrange for you to particiapte.

The main reason for closing off in March is that the real puprose of the project was to do a letter a week, and to create two alphabets by the end of the year. We felt that you could probably catch up 12 weeks worth of letters; but that after that we had lost the spirit of the original project. The original post here outlines the idea behind what we are trying to do.

So please get in touch if you would like to participate. We have folk from across Australia, the USA and Venezuela participating; other countries are more than welcome to join in!

Fiona

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.

Linda's first letters

The paint effect on the large large letters was a happy accident! I was experimenting writing with water and dropping black gouache into the puddles - then I blotted one with a kitchen paper towel that has these dots impressed all over it - and it gave this surprising textured effect! So I have run with it and intend completing this alphabet along the same lines. Tools used: Horizon pen, balsa pen, pointed pen or edged pen, all using black gouache diluted in different strengths with water, on HP watercolour paper.

Linda.

Letters found on a Miami trip

My family and I just returned from a week in Florida, cool but sunny and no snow in Miami. We went to Art Deco area of Miami Beach and cruised Ocean Drive people watching and admiring the colorful buildings. Two letters are from some of the signs, enhanced and tweeted in Photoshop Elements. The last I drew on the bathroom mirror after a shower. I converted it to black and white and gave it a grainy feel and like the result as it enhanced the inline of drops.

Jean

Montana

CJ's February Letters

A little bit of everything, traditional, brush and the back of my spiderweb chair.

I'm so enjoying coming here to see what everyone's been doing. What I especially love about this type of project is seeing all the different ways the subject is interpreted.

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.

February Letters - Valerie

Noela's February letters

Here is the latest letter - a 'D'.

D - select, clone, stretch, add shadows

B - select, flip, paste and clone

C - flip, clone, stretch and draw

I posted 5 letters in January, so there are only three for February. The B is rather ugly, but I am OK with that as it will add some colour contrast to the final alphabet. After all, I am working to expand my 'photoshop' skills rather than to make a beautiful end product.

Just a reminder - this is the box I am using as raw material.

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.