It's probably a predictable activity of the practitioners, but calligraphers are continually making art from the alphabet. No actual words, just the letters. We might use anywhere from one to all twenty-six (and our favorite, the ampersand--so lovely, those ampersands!) to make a composition. I've seen hundreds of these pieces and many are truly beautiful/interesting/inspiring and worthy of very expensive framing!I am a calligrapher. However, to date, my alphabet-play has never made it past the practice paper. A few weeks ago, I figured that it was high time to organize some letters into various formations on good paper as a self-imposed exercise. I decided to work small (about 8"x 8" image area) and to make several pieces of various styles, colors and media to be displayed as one arrangement. Nine pieces seemed a good number.
There really is no limit to the choices to be made and I am just the worst decision-maker. I could have been paralyzed for months! But, somehow, here they are. It was fun, and I'm sure that this isn't the end of it. Of the numerous blank walls on which to display this little business, I decided to put them in the entryway near the front door.
So, here's the overview shot, then there's a closer shot of each piece, to be continued in the next post. See what you think. What I think is that, in this case, $6.99 (the cheapest I could find) was plenty to spend on each frame.
The first enlargement is freestyle, asian-sort-of look.
The second is a treatment of the blackletter (sometimes called "old english" or "gothic"). I used gold paint behind the capital letter, which is technically in a "versal" style typically used with blackletter in medieval manuscripts. By the by, though I didn't use real gold in this case, the use of real gold and it's reflective qualities is the reason those old manuscripts are called "illuminated".
The next one is an informal italic with white ink on black paper written with a "folded" nib--a shaped piece of metal folded to hold ink. Love this nib!
The last on this page is a square arrangement of freestyle italic lower case surrounding freestyle Roman caps on a background of color made with pastels.
Continued...
