I am very excited about my new project. I have finished two drafts of the first four verses of Masters of War by Bob Dylan and I have ideas on presentation of the next four verses. I hope that the ideas keep coming. It has been good fun so far.
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After spending a great deal of time with my mother-in-law, who needs a lot of attention having ended up in the hospital with a leg broken in three places, I had the pleasure of a lovely afternoon with Vicki and Chris making a Drum Leaf Bound Book. I was able to put all my cares away for the afternoon.
First up we played with spray paint to make the covers. These due in some part to the texture on the paper made beautiful covers. Then, under the expert tutoring of Vicki we made our Drum Leaf Book. It is only a small book measuring approx 11.5cm by 16cm. This type of binding can be found documented in an article by Timothy Ely in Bonefolder Magazine. Alisa Golden also has a great step by step article in her blog from 2007. I love this structure it is just great for calligraphy. It is very pleasant doing the washing up with the scent of hyacinths. It doesn't seem like a year has passed since my last post of hyacinths. This year I have white ones. How pretty they are and how lovely they smell. I am still practicing Roman capitals. There has been some progress made. Slowly .... slowly.
I had the best time at my first Summer School in Winter. It was superbly run by the Victorian Calligraphy Society. So well organised. It was also lovely to meet up with other calligraphers for a whole week.
I was fortunate enough to be able to spend the week with my friend Ann. Many thanks to Ann for having me to stay and spoiling me rotten. I spent the entire week with my favourite tutor, Olive Bull. We immersed ourselves in Romans. I would love to say that I am now GREAT at Roman lettering but sadly that is not the case. We also learnt about the Golden Rule (for both Roman lettering and page layout.) When I got home I dug out a Bound and Lettered magazine from 2012 and made myself my own Fibonacci Gauge Pattern from matt board. It certainly makes measuring the Golden Rule proportions easier. The Golden Rule or the Golden Mean, or simply phi is the Greek term for the ratio of 1 to 1.618. Now I just need to work out how to use it to good effect! Just when I thought that I had come to the end with the Eco Prints! I spent the last couple of days inside working on the Jacob's Ladder Box or Karakuri Bako or Trick Box. I first read up on it in 'All Things Paper: 20 Unique Projects from Leading Paper Crafters, Artists, and Designers' by Ann Martin. Cecelia Louie contributed her take on the Trick Box in Ann's book. Cecelia calls it the 'Mysterious Stationery Box'. Cecelia's directions are very good. This box is fascinating and such fun too. Well, it might not be very visible from these photos but when I put the papers on to make the box into a Jacob's Ladder box, I stuck them on the wrong way so that although the trick box works the papers are covering up the wrong compartments.
So, then only thing to do was modify the box into a ordinary box with three compartments - with lovely eco printed covers and linings. One thing about this exercise is that it is a good reminder that not everything goes smoothly or perfectly but that the results can be lovely nevertheless. I am looking forward to attempting this box again. Well, it has been a while but I have been working hard on my Neuland Script exemplar book inspired by Olive Bull. It has taken longer than I expected but I think that the effort has been worthwhile. I still have several more pages that I want to add to it. Here is a small sample of the pages I have completed. I have left room at the side to make the pages into a simple Japanese binding (I think). That is the plan at the moment. Still more pages to complete before that. How lucky am I that Josie's pages for the Round Robin journalling was a forest theme. I was able to use my eco prints for the page. Just completed an illuminated letter F for a friend.
I have been taking lessons with the most beautiful person. Pamela is 84 and an inspiration to us all. She still goes to the gym, uses the internet all the time to source more and more examples of illumination for us to study and takes classes on a Thursday. At the moment she is unwell so I am wishing her a speedy recovery. These were my last A Letter A Week 2014 letters for the challenge co-ordinated by Fiona Dempster. I am well overdue with my next set. The versals (drawn with pencil) were again a challenge but I think that they have turned out OK. Just recently I spent a lovely weekend with my fellow Canberra Calligraphers and Elaine Witton at a weekend workshop. Elaine often comes up with new ideas and this time she introduced us to a type of monoprinting that I had not tried before. We used a product called Scratch-Foam board. It produces a form of relief printing similar to lino cutting. But instead of the laborious task of using lino and lino cutting tools (and in my case, cutting myself on the tools) the printing plate is produced by pressing or drawing lines and mapping out areas into the soft foam surface. The printing ink was then applied with a brayer in the same manner as for lino prints. A piece of paper is laid on the top and pressed with a baren to transfer the ink from the board to the paper. Such an ingenious idea. The Scratch-Board itself is quite soft as you would imagine and so the images produced on the Scratch-Board will not be as long lasting as lino prints and although they can be used again and again their life is limited. We experimented with multi-coloured effects, rolling the ink on different areas of the plate producing prints after prints, including some 'ghost' prints which are the second or third print from one layer of printing ink. I was so taken with this process that I believe I produced the most prints! The second part of the workshop was revisiting the Carolingian script and combining the monoprinting with the script. I have to say that my focus was all on the monoprinting so the Carolingian script came a poor second and in the end I only managed a couple of small pieces. |
LYNDELL DOBBS
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