DOMESTIKA COURSE – ENGLISH CALLIGRAPHY – FINAL PROJECT
At long last I have completed this course. It did seem to drag on, partly because I was waiting for materials to arrive, and also because of other things going on in my life.
I had already decided not to tie myself down to completing each course in a single month. One of the reasons for this was that it seemed a shame to move on to something new after completing only one project. I need to consolidate what I have learnt, and I also want to enjoy exploring my new skills with all kinds of different projects.
I’ve been having a major clear-out in my studio, which has also taken up quite a bit of time.
Another calligraphy course
While exploring different lettering styles on Pinterest, I came across a site called Loveleigh Loops (I do love that name!) run by twin sisters. They run various courses including a free one called “Simple to Spectacular.” This is only a five day course and it is on flourishes, those gorgeous loopy embellishments you see on copperplate writing. I signed up for this. I have not been able to keep up with one session per day, but there’s no time limit on it. I am now on Day 3 and doing quite well. This is another reason for not keeping up with the Domestika course.
My final project for the Domestika course
We were instructed to write something on dark coloured paper, preferably using gouache or some other coloured medium. I experimented on some of the grey paper I bought for the DrawAwesome drawing course I did last year, but couldn’t find anything suitable to write with. In the end I chose a piece of 9 x 12 in. black cardstock. This is not particularly good quality paper as far as ink work is concerned, and it presented some problems with my pen and ink.
I chose Dr. Ph. Martin’s gold calligraphy ink, and went back to my dip pen with the nib that came complete with a reservoir. The results were not nearly as smooth as I would have liked. I am still struggling to find the ideal writing implement. My new fountain pen is great, but it isn’t quite flexible enough to give those gorgeous sweeping thicks and thins which I am trying to achieve. Anyway, I had to use a dip pen for this project. I really need some expert advice on nibs.
The choice of subject
I decided on a secular theme this time. I have a box set of three hardback books of English poetry from the Middle Ages to the present day, which was a gift from a friend several years ago. Flipping through, I needed to find something that wasn’t too long to go on a single sheet, and which was beautiful and meaningful.
I came across the famous love poem by Robert Burns, which has to be one of the most beautiful ever written, expressing so eloquently his love for his “bonnie lass.” I love the Scottish dialect spellings in this poem, which take me back to my Scottish ancestry, and how my grandmother used to speak. This poem has also been set to music, and here is a recording by the great Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar.
How I worked the project
I began by writing it out in rough in pencil on printer paper, to get the layout correct, and then formed the letters in the copperplate style. I took advantage of what I am learning in the flourishes course and embellished many of the letters in the poem.
Transferring the design
It is not possible to use the light panel to trace a design onto dark coloured paper because the light won’t penetrate it. This means that you have to draw guidelines on the fair copy, which involves a lot of work, and no guarantee that you can erase them afterwards without damaging the final art work.
I spent at least a week thinking about how to transfer the design, and how to draw my own guidelines. I wasn’t happy with the ones supplied by the Domestika course – the smaller scale one being too small, and the larger one being too big, and I wasn’t keen on the proportions, either. I decided to draw my own, and this involved another lot of time-consuming work.
I did a huge amount of online research, and it appears that the proportions and line spacing of this form of calligraphy is very much a matter of personal taste. In the course of my researches I came across a nifty little tool called the Ames Lettering Guide.
This clear plastic device has a rotating disc and different holes. You can use it with a T-ruler to draw parallel lines of any distance apart.
I did quite a bit of experimenting with it, but in the end I designed my own grid guidelines on my desktop publisher, which took absolutely ages! The traditional proportion is for the ascenders and descenders to be twice the x-height (the height of lower case letters) but I found this to be problematic with line spacing, because if you wer to avoid the long ascenders and descenders tangling with each other, the line spacing would be much too great and wouldn’t look good. I therefore went along with those who make the ascenders and descenders the same height as the x-height. Here is the grid I designed.
The lines are 3/16-in apart, and the diagonal lines are set at 55 degrees, the traditional slope of the letters. They are equally spaced, but they do not determine the width of the letters, but serve as a guide to keep the slope consistent throughout.
I used this grid on the light panel to write my poem in pencil onto copy paper. Once this was done, I had to find a way to transfer this onto the black paper.
Originally I thought of writing out the poem with white ink, but it looked a bit too stark on the black paper. The white Indian ink was too watery (perhaps I didn’t shake it enough) and I got better results with diluted Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bleed Proof White.
In the end, after experimenting with different colours that didn’t look right, I decided upon gold, and used Dr. Ph. Martin’s gold calligraphy ink, which you can see in the picture below.
White transfer paper
While trying to decide how to transfer the design, I discovered white transfer paper and ordered a pack, which came today. This is an update on the black carbon paper we used to use with typewriters in the old days. You can get it in different colours, too.
I laid a sheet of this on top of the black paper, and taped my draft on top, and went over the lines with a sharp 2H pencil. The lines transferred perfectly, and I later discovered that they were easy to erase by rolling a kneaded eraser over the design.
As you can see, I also included a rose picture on the left of the text.
Inking the design
Before working on the final project, I did a bit of practising on various scraps of black card.
Originally I thought I might add some shadows to the initial capitals at the beginning of each line, using red paint, but I wasn’t very happy with the result of this, so abandoned the idea. You can see that I have also tested a few colours on the black card above.
I used my dip pen with the nib that is fitted with a reservoir. The results were not as good as I had hoped. The paper really wasn’t good enough quality, just being black cardstock. Also, I continue to struggle to get a nib to form those gorgeous sweeping thicks and thins so characteristic of this style. I really need some expert advice on nibs! Even my beautiful new fountain pen is not as flexible as I would like.
It’s a little bit patchy. I used the calligraphy pen to draw the rose, applying the same techniques as for the script, to give it a calligraphic feel that would fit with the text. In the end I suppose I was pretty satisfied with the result but could do better! I did enjoy incorporating the flourishes I had learnt.
Colouring the rose
I opened up my new Kuretake Gansai Tambi paint set that my hubby gave me for my birthday last week.
One of the great things about these paints is that with enough water, you can paint with them as you would with normal watercolours, but less dilute, they behave like gouache and are quite opaque. I found that they worked very well on the black paper.
I chose a couple of reds and a yellow for the rose flower, and two greens for the stem and leaves. I faded out the colour into the areas where I wanted shadow – counter-intuitive after being so accustomed to white paper!
The finished project
Detail of the rose.
Detail of the text.
I tried to photograph this to capture the shine of the gold, but as usual, this is not easy.
The conclusion of the course at last!
I am very pleased to have completed this course at last. It’s taken me two months. There have been so many delays and interruptions and I was beginning to get a bit desperate and keen to get it out of the way! I’ll be posting about the flourishes course soon, and in the meantime I need to do some serious research into nibs.
