Learning Calligraphy never ends.

Rick Paulua, a former White House Calligrapher, gave a great workshop for the Friends of Calligraphy in September. It was called The Truely Flexible Pointed Pen. Here are two that  I produced in the workshop....roughs, first draft;

The first rough. As I finished my pen dropped a blob....guess it was telling me it wasn't good enough and to do over again. I knew it anyway....

This is the second one, losening and less control.  Trying to have some fun with this.

Trivial Pursuits 30

The annual Trivial Pursuits with Friends of Calligraphy is 30 years old. It is a wonderful time of learning 6 arts and crafts in a single day. It began 30 years ago with the idea from Anne Yamasaki. It has been going strong each year with a full house of 40 eager participants, 6 teachers and helpers.
In order to attend, each person must send in a decorated envelope, their application. There is a contest with first, second and third prizes. I won first this year!  Here is my envelope that was sent to our coordinator;

Workshop with Rebecca Wild

A wonderful weekend workshop with Rebecca Wild was sponsored by Friends of Calligraphy. Nature inspired, we made our 7"x7" pieces. Rebecca returned, from a few years ago, to share with us more techniques she uses for her art. It was a wonderful two days. Magic tape, Strathmore 700 paper, self stick clear shelving, Golden mat medium, acrylics and soft pastels were our main tools. (I must get Pan Pastels. I was able to use some of Rebecca's and loved the pigments) Here is the photo of the four I created. It is really wonderful that she had us make a portfolio, to keep our pieces for reference. These are our 'practice' pieces.

The portfolio is made with Canson MiTientes red with the last piece done with acrylics. The others were done, mainly with soft pastels.

John Stevens - Two Lines Intersecting (Interacting)

The Summer Workshop of Friends of Calligraphy had the good fortune of having master calligrapher, John Stevens give this years summer workshop at the I House on the UC Berkeley campus.  20 of us were lucky to be in it.  John passed on exercises to study lines created by us with brushes and pens...shapes-letterforms-text blocks.  All of us had varying degrees of self imposed success and failures.  I think everyone learned a lot.  I certainly did.  Not only did John give us this class, he also gave a presentation at the San Francisco Public Library. It was standing room only and was well received. He also gave time to sign his book, Scribes.
Here are a few photos from the workshop that I can post.

A practice piece of John's to test his pointed pen and paint.  The smallest sentence is only 1/16".

My attempts using flat brush and have lines intersecting or interacting...

More attempts.....

White board examples of explanation on forms of text.. but first printing with the influence of Roman Caps.

All eyes front as we went around the room for critics.

Piece I did with John's 2" brush...fun...

The accordian folio done with John's suggestions of using our first 2 line stroke statues...need to finish the text..

Only the one folio that I finished..can be seen this way or upside down...still has balance..illustration to text..

John's example of uneven alignment

Here is another great piece. I can't remember who did it.

Christina Schenk did this lovely folio

Joe Boissy had time to do the intersecting line alphabet...this is his first attempt...good! Bonnie Noehr also made time to do them and was successful, I think.

The Moving Line of Roman Cursive, a workshop of Massimo Polello

The charming Italian came all the way from Turin to give Friends of Calligraphy a workshop.  I was fortunate in being in this class.  The first papers of a copy of an old Roman cursive writing was given to us.  It looked like gibberish until Massimo lead us through the forms.  After attempts of understanding the form and how it was written, we were challenged to be free to do variations of it and how we could use these forms to create art.  Like a dance, know the basic steps and make your own body movement to the music.  The following photos are of the book I made of my exercises and practice. I think this is a good way to reference what Massimo tried to teach.  I just need a lot more practice...lots more.

Front cover,  all pages are half lengthwise of Canson Mi Tientes. Some were cut down to accommodate W book form and stitched with a simple pamphlet stitch.

The back of the stitched book.  I did not photo all pages...

Trivial Pursuits XXVI

It happened again for the 26th time.  I have had fun coordinating this event for the last three years.  Six teachers and 40 students plus two volunteers have a day long event.  Each teacher teaches five times with 50 minute classes.  Check out my past blog with the flyer notice.  I wanted to make a colorful banner this time since our theme was 'RED'.  This is what I came up with and used for the first time water soluble artists' crayons.  I really liked how they performed.

In the works, I randomly colored Strathmore 400 drawing paper.  I then cut out letters to spell out Trivial Pursuits XXVI.  I then glued then on plain paper and cut a halo around them.

I place them on red paper to see how they would look against the red.

Close-up of the banner

The finished banner....photoed in my hall.

Wonderful gift bags were prepared for everyone.  I made these nametags to identify each persons bag using a letterform inspired by Garth Colgan.

LUCA BARCELLONA WORKSHOP

The Friends of Calligraphy with the help of Linnea Lundquist and Ward Dunham arranged a wonderful workshop with Luca Barcellona of Milan, Italy.  All 20 of us were delighted and engaged with his expert hand.  FRAKTUR IN THE FOG (we didn't have any fog though).

This is the Montara Lighthouse entrance leading to our workshop building.

This is the caretakers home at the Montara lighthouse.

The shower schedule scripted by Suzy Taylor with appropriate quotes.

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First Sunset.  We were fortunate to have clear but very cold weather.

Part of our lesson on fraktur lower forms.

This is a sample of Luca Barcellona's original pieces..

wonderful!