Monday, November 10, 2014

Lettering with an oblique calligraphy pen and nib

Hi everyone -Hope you're all well! And a very happy pre-Veteran's Day!

I wanted to share this post on how I created some lettering for my most recent piece for the Make Art That Sells course, by Lilla Rogers. We are now in week 4, of a 5 week online course, but last week was on Scrapbooking.
The scrapbook page I created for MATSB
Because I was working very swiftly due to a self-imposed deadline of Thursday night for my piece, I broke out my trusty lettering tools to play with and create icons. A very quick background about me, I had the great pleasure of working as a Professional Lettering Artist for American Greetings right out of college many years ago, and was able to glean so much from that wonderful experience. I still to this day find such peace in creating letters, though I am very rusty at proper miniscules (lowercase letterform) and majuscules (uppercase, or large letterforms).

Anyway, for this piece, I sketched most of the icons and lettering in pencil, and then inked them on vellum or tracing paper, though tracing paper buckles unfortunately. I also just played with the ink and oblique pen and lettered phrases in my own handwriting, as well as drew with the pen freeform icons and squiggles as well.

Tools/material: I used pencils, laser paper, tracing paper, and Canson Vellum, with Higgins Eternal black ink, and an oblique pen holder with Hunt Artist's Pen Nibs (Extra Fine #22)

Here are a bunch of my lettering pens and nibs

sketch in pencil

poodle inked with oblique pen and Hunt nib on vellum..can you see the pencil sketch underneath?


Here you can see the pencil sketch sheet showing underneath the inked vellum sheet

Some very terrible freehand letterforms

some freehand handwriting, mistakes, and revised "bon"'s

I didn't use these, but the same idea was here, which was to sketch in pencil first, then ink on vellum

I decided to sketch in pencil with a little more precision.

Here is a sheet of inked icons and words on vellum. Feathers and scribbles were freeform as I was just playing with the tools.

My daughter kindly video'ed myself using the tools..I wanted to just share the angle that I draw at, and how you can get really neat thicks and thins using the fun oblique pen holder. I hope you try it sometime! 



33 comments:

  1. Loved the calligraphy video! Very cool, Shirley!

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    1. Angela, thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

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  2. Shirley, thanks for sharing--this was eye-opening and fun to watch! Your icons and lettering look fabulous!

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    1. Hi Jacqui! Thanks so much for popping by! I appreciate your kind words..hope you get to try the oblique sometime!

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  3. I really enjoyed seeing your lettering... I never could get the hang of the oblique nib holder! It just seemed awkward to me - I need to try harder :)
    Keep going Shirley, your lettering is looking wonderful.

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    1. June! I hope you get out those nibs and holders sometime..it's pretty fun once you just let loose and play. :) No trying harder, just play! :) Thank you so much!

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  4. I enjoy lettering too, though now that I think about it seems like it's been a long time since I've done it. Thanks for providing inspiration! I especially like your poodle :)

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    1. Oh, you are SO kind, Linda! I'm sure your lettering is fabulous! Thanks for the kind words..hope you've been well!

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  5. Brilliant, lovely work and I enjoyed the video, thank-you! I've never seen that pen before, I like how you push it around and it complies. I work for AG, but here in England at UKG, would you show AG this piece, it is lovely ?!! :)

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    1. Julie, thanks so much! I hope you get to check out the obliques..I'm really surprised AG doesn't have that out there! I haven't worked for AG in so long..and I know they have an amazing team doing lettering still, though it's quite smaller in number than when I worked there unfortunately. :) You are so kind! Very cool to know you're working in the England AG!!

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  6. I loved this post. Do more videos!!!!

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    1. Ha! Thank you so much Bethania! Will try to convince my daughter to tape me again soon. :)

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  7. Dang, you have the most gorgeous penmanship. I'm in such awe! xoxo

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