Foundation Degree in Calligraphy / week #10

I've been fininishing off my assignments this week and gathering all my final pieces together in readiness for submission next week. The Roman Capitals...The Foundational Hand...
My research book...



And the Monoline Roman Capitals and Miniscules, presented in two small concertina books...

Foundation Degree in Calligraphy / week #9

Full steam ahead now with the Foundational text for this element of my assignment. The content is chosen and I've worked out the nib size, line spacing and layout, although I may change this later. I've made some notes to refer to as I write, and I'm always aware of the particular letters that continue to give me problems, including that pesky 'l'.
So... a few exercises to try and stamp out that stupid letter that I seem to have a mental block with....mmmm... that seems better, wonder how long it will last!
Other students are working on various tasks. Here Nathalie dampens a line on a sheet of paper to experiment in developing a decal edge.Meanwhile...I have been writing my text out in chisel pencil. I've decided to change the layout a bit and I'm trying the lines out with various indents and line endings to make the most appealing layout.
I've also made a decision to have a drop capital initial to the beginning of the piece. Again, I try different sizes in pencil only, and separate the top line of the text to see how that could work together with the initial cap.
I decide on this size for the cap initial and I'm much happier with the layout and particularly the line endings. I think I can get cracking now with the final piece!
Nathalie is busy preparing her Foundational piece too, working out the layout with strips of writing and placing them on a sheet of cartridge paper to get the position of each line just right.

Foundation Degree in Calligraphy / week #8

Plenty of time this week with the Foundational hand. Nasty habits need eradicating... that wrong 'l' without the serif; correcting the backslant; achieving the perfect 'o'... and 's'... and 'b'...

getting the 'arches' right.... I could go on....After learning how to sharpen a nib on an Arkansas Stone, Ivo gives it a whirl... a study in concentration...A little bit of fun with colour to end the day...

Foundation Degree in Calligraphy / week #7

After spending some time on the Roman Capitals we've been moving on to miniscules during this week. Using similar elementary exercises; monoline letters, double pencils, we finally get to study the Foundational Hand, and begin to practice with pen and ink.The usual feedback and critique session with our tutor help us to understand our approach and techniques on this basic hand.
Plenty of writing practice to get into a rhythm with the writing. Below is an axample of how it should look! We'll be producing another piece of text in this hand for our second assignment, so plenty of writing practice required over the next couple of weeks. (Note - these few blog posts are being written retrospectively).