I had the best weekend! I went to a calligraphy workshop - Painted Roman Caps on Fabric. Susan Hufton, an amazing, calligrapher and lettering artist from London is a great instructor. The class began promptly at 9:00 and we learned and worked from the minute the class started until it ended each day at 5:00p. We covered an amazing amount of material and I learned *so* much.
I have very little experience with a brush, no experience painting on fabric, and no experience with Roman Caps. So this was a great way to introduce all three! I purchased Sue's book, Step by Step Calligraphy many years ago. (You can find it used on Amazon.) It features the techniques we used in class.
The class started with a brief introduction to Roman Caps and we practiced doing skeleton letters and drawing Roman Caps with pencil. We spent the afternoon getting acquainted with the brush and painting the letters onto different textures of paper. Then all day Sunday we spent playing with different paints, inks, and fabrics.
This was a great process for me because I normally work *very* fast. My pointed pen and flourishing are quick movements from the shoulder. It was refreshing to slow down and draw the letter and slowly paint it. Clearly I have a lot of work to do on the letter forms, but I really enjoyed it.
This was FW Acrylic on linen (an old tablecloth).
This is cheap watercolor paint on the same linen:
This is schmenke pan silver on dupoini silk:
This is the silver on polyster nylon. This was surprisingly easy.
And this was a little monochromatic experiment on cotton broadcloth. This was also the FW Acrylic.
If you ever have the opportunity to take a class with Sue, I highly recommend it.
There are so many applications for this. It will come in handy for gifts, I'm sure. Now I'm off to practice Roman Caps! And P.S. The "baby" is practicing for a friend. :-)
