Love Letters

2008 International Calligraphy Conference

This is the logo for the 2008 calligraphy conference, designed by Brody Neuenschwander, an extremely successful, famous calligrapher and (in his words) text artist. Pretty cool, huh? The lettering conference was amazing, crazy busy, challenging, stimulating, and lots and lots of fun.

I took Gestural Writing with Yves Leterme, a very kind and gentle man, who is a student of Brody Neuenschwander's. The image below is from Yves' manual, given to the students in his class. The first alphabet (on the left) is a formal italic script and the second alphabet (on the right) is Yves' informal script. His writing is graceful and beautiful, while at the same time, unconventional and unusual. It is gorgeous... and try as I might, I could not master it, or even come close, during the week in class with Yves.

I'm determined to keep working at learning the art of Gestural Writing, and I'll keep working at mastering the basic scripts, too. I felt very much like a first grader in Yves' class, which was certainly not Yves' fault. I'm overly sensitive and overly critical of myself, and have a habit of reading way too much into other's behavior... I'm still very much like a little girl, wanting to please my teacher... and I knew my teacher was frustrated and disappointed with my letterforms (at least that's what I thought to myself... I was far too timid to actually ask if that was the case). Despite my extreme sensitivity and self-consciousness, it was an awesome experience, and I learned SO much about SO many things! There is no question in my mind, that I'll be a better calligrapher because of this experience, and I'm really thankful for it.

Artful Blogger

What a thrill to come home from the Calligraphy Conference to this issue of Artful Blogger!!! I'm delighted to be included in this issue (on page 50, just in case you're interested!), and feel honored to be in the same issue as my friend Seth, from The Altered Page (see page 69). I have to thank my friend Michelle Ward for encouraging me to become active in the blogging community, back in July '07... it's made all the difference in the world to me!

So if you're just hanging around, lurking, pondering becoming an active contributor to the world of blogs; what are you waiting for?!? Come on! There's so much to learn... how to post, how to add photos and images, how important it is to be a supportive blog reader, how to take better photographs... the list goes on and on. Trust me on this one... you'll have fun while learning new things... and it just doesn't get much better than that!

Thank you, Marion!

How cool is this?!? I am the lucky recipient of this fabulous card and envelope from Marion, who lives in Munster, Germany... what a treat to find this in my mailbox..thank you so much, Marion!!! I am really thrilled, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! It was definitely worth the wait!

I'm getting a bit nervous about getting everything done in time to leave Friday morning for "Conference"... I've only known for about five or six months that I was going to this conference, but do you think I'm even remotely ready to go?!? And do you think I planned for this last minute madness by taking any extra time off from work?!? I know, I really didn't have to ask that question... I'm an artist! I'm mostly right brained... I try really hard to only be logical at work, where they pay me to be left brained!!! I digress... back to getting ready... seriously, why on earth would I do anything in advance, that I could put off until the last minute?!? I mean, really... there's a five or six year old little girl "driving my bus" most of the time... as Mariah Carey said, "I'm basically twelve. You can't possibly expect a child to get ready on time, can you?!?"... you got that right, girlfriend!!! (giggle, giggle... tee hee hee!)

So, I'll do my best to post from the 2008 International Calligraphy Conference, if I can find the time. I have no idea what to expect as far as time to myself, so be patient with me if I don't post until I come home, the weekend of the 26th, okay?

Now go make something, and have a great day!!!

Letters are symbols...

Just think about it... how did we end up with these 26 symbols we use everyday to communicate with one another? It's a fascinating subject that starts with runes and hieroglyphics and ends up with our modern day letters. The alphabet began with only consonants and eventually came to include the vowels as we know them (the Hebrew alphabet still is written without vowels). The Roman letters were made up of only "uppercase" letters, or majuscules, (from the Latin word for major). Eventually "lowercase" letters were included, called minuscules, (from the Latin word for minor). Letters became known as uppercase or lowercase based on how printers in the day stored the letters they used in printing; the majuscule letters were kept in a case stored above the case holding the minuscule letters, hence upper and lowercase letters.
When the Irish scribes were transposing the scripture written in Latin by hand, they did not understand Latin, and at that time, there were no spaces between words. Eventually larger, more decorative letters were used to identify the beginning of a new idea or subject in the text, and over time, spaces were added to make reading the text easier.

None of this is taken from historical text verbatim, so if I got anything wrong, forgive me... I'm just writing what I recall after researching the topic a few years ago, for a research paper I wrote for a writing class. The instructor was wise enough to advise us to choose a topic we were passionate about, and I chose the history of the alphabet. Clearly there's much more to the subject than I've included above. The quote is one of my favorites, scribbled in a bit of a hurry.

Have a great day and go make something!

Today's letter play...

It's been too long since I posted anything, so I'm really happy to have something new to post! I've been preoccupied trying to learn InDesign, so that I can put together our Calligraphy Guild's newsletter. Silly me, I thought because I knew Photoshop fairly well, InDesign would be a snap! Well, let me tell you, the great big slice of humble pie I'm forcing down doesn't taste very good at all. It feels like I'm a complete neophyte at this whole computer thing, and it's really frustrating me. Thankfully, I come from a long line of stubborn fools, so I'm not giving up. I've made a commitment to my guild, and I'm going to keep my promise. I just don't know how long it's going to take me to produce anything worth sending out!

This piece is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I like it anyway. The text was done with a parallel pen, scanned into Photoshop, and placed over the scanned background. The background was painted with acrylics on Arches Text Wove paper.

Next Friday, I'm leaving for Naperville, Illinois, to attend the 2008 International Lettering Conference, and I'm so excited I just might pee my pants! I've never been to "conference" before (that's how all the seasoned attendees refer to the conference), so I've got lots and lots of questions; and I'm already worrying in overdrive. Worrying about what to wear, what I'll eat, will I gain weight while I'm there, will my roommate be able to tolerate my snoring, will I find my way around okay, will I get to Chicago okay, will my work be acceptable... you get the picture... I'm NUTS!!! I might be a bit obsessed, but I know in every cell of my body, that if I can just relax, I'll have tons of fun. Now if I can just get comfortable with the idea of my teenaged daughter caring for the pets while I'm gone, then I'll be okay... I think I will, anyway!
Oh, shoot... I've got to run to the art store... I forgot to get micron pens and charcoal pencils! Wish me well!!!