A (slightly late) Mother’s Day post

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Just before we get started – yes, I made sure that Mom saw this on Mother’s Day. So I am indeed a Good Son, which I know was a great concern of everyone’s.

So here’s this year’s Mother’s Day piece:

Laurie Anderson

This comes from Anderson’s song “O Superman,” which is a rather trippy song, all things considered:

Now there’s a lot to unpack there, and for me it recalls a very specific time period from college. Way too long to explain, but it warms my heart.

The bit that I pulled out for the piece stands out as a rather unconventional message for moms – that at the end of all things, when all else fails, mom is there.

I really like how the versal turned out – I always get nervous doing those without a clear vision of what I want, because I’m convinced something will go wrong. This worked out, though. The blue and white part could have been a little clearer, but again – lack of foresight. It’ll get you every time.

The first mock-up had a versal for each pair of lines, but I scrapped that idea right away. It would have been too bulky and distracting, aside from spelling out “WAA” down the side, a sound my mother hasn’t had to endure from me in quite a long time.

Let’s see, other notes… I picked Quadrata because these lyrics have a kind of litany feel to them, like something that would be chanted in a Mother’s Day ritual. Mind you, probably chanted in front of a great stone monolith of a statue whose eyes would glow red once the chanting was finished, but that’s pure speculation. In the song, this bit is immediately followed by a perky, “Hi, Mom!” but I left that out, as I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

The three key words – Justice, Force, and Mom – are all colored in their first appearance, but not their second seeing as how they’re “gone”. The color scheme of the versal is meant to echo those colors as well as the colors of the As (which are the color that Love would have been, were it not also “gone”).

I think that’s about it. Mom’s response on Facebook: “Awwww… made me weep!” Which means it worked.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there!

May the Fourth Be With You (2016)

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I do so love May the Fourth – Star Wars Day as it’s otherwise known. Up until last year or so, though, I had no real way to participate in that day. Nothing to contribute, really, other than to pass around some cartoons or memes that someone else had put together.

Ah, but then I started on calligraphy and discovered that I do have a way to contribute. Last year I did a bunch of great lines from the movies, and had such fun that I thought I’d do it again. So here, without further wind-up, are this year’s Star Wars Day pieces. Enjoy!

It's variously "I have" and "I've got" throughout the movies. I picked this one. Ink: Waterman Tender Purple Script: Italic
It’s variously “I have” and “I’ve got” throughout the movies. I picked this one.
Ink: Waterman Tender Purple
Script: Italic

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Words, Words, Words

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It’s not been a terribly productive week, honestly. You know how it is – some weeks you’re on fire and can’t do enough, while other weeks it’s just… bluh.

Fortunately, I have the Reddit calligraphy community, and they have a regular Word of the Day so that I can at least get some practice done with a modicum of good conscience. Mind you, these are usually the first things I do in the evening, so they’re not always as good as they could be, but I thought I’d share – especially since the words of the last week or so have been more about the letters than the words themselves. For example:

Cabbaged
With 8 letters and together with “fabaceae,” they are the longest English words that are playable on an instrument.

So, here’s what I do when I can’t think of anything else to do. Enjoy!

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Let’s Go Crazy…

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The death of Prince didn’t hit me nearly the way the death of David Bowie did, but there is no denying that Prince was a vast influence on the landscape of modern music. What’s more, he was talented to the point of unbelievability and, as has surfaced in recent interviews, he was a humanitarian who made every effort to help people in need, all while taking no credit for it.

So here’s my tribute piece to the man who should have had much, much more time:

Prince

The scan really doesn’t do credit to the Purple Pizazz from Diamine, but it suits perfectly. This took a few tries to get right, as most things do. I’m happy with how it came out, though, and of all the many, many words the man wrote, I think these were the best choice.

Now. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get through the rest of 2016 without any more legends leaving our midst.

The Final Ink Drop

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Yup, you read that right – this is the last one. Goulet Pens announced earlier this month that they were discontinuing the Ink Drop program. Oddly enough, the main reason was because it was too popular, which doesn’t seem to make sense. So much so that I mentioned to to our business teacher as a possible case study for his students. They explained it rather well, though.

The end of the Ink Drop was a bit anticlimactic, and a lot of comments seemed to be, “But what about ME?!” I admit, it would have been nice to end with a bit more flourish (a writing joke -get it?) but it is what it is, and I’m thankful that I was able to benefit from the program for as long as I did.

That said, here’s this month’s colors! The theme is “Forest Foray”.

2016.04 Ink Drop

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a fan of brown fountain pen inks. Walnut ink passes muster, but not much else. Indeed, Earth Brown has a little more yellow in it than I would like, and while Terracotta is more on the red end of brown, if I wanted an orangy ink, there are a lot of others I could go with. But that’s just me – your mileage may vary.

As for the greens, They’re all good. Forest Green is dark and rich, Sherwood green is a little more obvious in its Green-ness, and Magical Forest… Well, it’s one of Diamine’s “Shimmertastic” inks, and it lives up to the label. It’s almost ostentatiously shiny.

As an aside – I don’t think I’ll ever use a Shimmertastic ink in a pen. The glittery bits settle pretty quickly, and if there’s one thing you never want to do, it’s shake a fountain pen. I’ve been getting lots of use out of them for calligraphy, though.

So there we are. That’s it for the Ink Drop, which means several things:

  1. I’ll finally be able to start running down the trillion little ink samples I have on my desk, and
  2. I’ll need to find something else to put on this blog. Damn you, Goulet, for making me actually put effort into something!

I’d like to extend my appreciation again to Goulet Pens for having provided this service, and I really can’t recommend them enough. I’ve bought from them many times – pen, paper, ink, supplies – and they will continue to be my first choice in this regard.

Now. What else to write about…?

Alas, Poor Yorick…

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Over on Reddit a week or so ago, there was a question about how long it would take to write out the entirety of Hamlet in calligraphy. A student wanted to know for an English project, and the general consensus was that it would take much, much too long and would probably not be nearly valuable enough in terms of the grade earned versus the time put in. We managed to talk the student down to a soliloquy-length piece.

Still, it got me thinking – how long would it take? I decided to give it a shot, and this is what the result was:

William Shakespeare - Hamlet

Overall, I think it turned out very nice. The versal is pretty much mine, and the trees come from the Wharncliffe Hours. I know – using a fifteenth-century illumination on lines from a seventeenth-century play? What kind of madness is that? But it fits the mood of the piece, and I like it.

In case you’re wondering, here’s how the stats worked out:

  • Eight lines, 76 words, 311 characters: 38 minutes

That’s about 7 seconds per character, about 30 seconds per word on average. There’s a few short pauses in there, re-dipping the pen, remembering to inhale, that sort of thing, but that’s my data.

Also, it took four tries to get through the whole thing without making a mistake, so I should add about another half hour or so for false starts, setting up a new page, etc. So just for fun, let’s call it a full hour – that feels short, but it’ll do:

  • 11.5 seconds per character, 47 seconds per word.

Let’s aim for somewhere in the middle: about 10 seconds per character (I get about 142,000 characters from the Gutenberg text)

Therefore, it should take me – writing continuously in italic with no breaks – 16.5 days of writing.

If I spend 8 hours a day writing, so that I can eat and do other things besides writing, it would take almost 50 days.

That would be quite the labor of love, to say the least. For now, I’ll stick to my short pieces.

Annual All-Reddit Calligriphication Extravaganza

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April Fool’s Day is one of those Love It/Hate It kind of things. When it’s done cleverly, it can be a lot of fun. When it isn’t… Well, it isn’t.

But over on the Calligraphy subreddit (which went full Comic Sans for April 1st, a jarring change), we have a wonderful tradition of exploring around Reddit, finding entertaining comments, and prettying them up in calligraphy. Mind you, many of them won’t make sense without context, but that’s probably even better. So here’s this year’s batch – enjoy!

(Note – there may be some NSFW text in here. Scratch that. There will be.)

Reddit Comments - Autism Spectre
I think this has the makings of a great kids’ show.

 

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Learning a New Script – Book of Kells

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I thought it might be fun to walk everyone (crickets) through how I go about learning a new script – specifically a historical one from a specific source. In this case, it was the famous Book of Kells, an Irish manuscript of the four Gospels, currently located in Trinity College Dublin.

Now, one option is to get your tactical black turtleneck on, put your infiltration gear together and break into the College library. I would recommend the west skylights – they haven’t replaced the wiring for the alarms for quite a while and they’re unreliable at best. Rappel down quietly – quietly – and use your mirror array to deflect the lasers surrounding the Kells display. At this point, your diversion should happen – a small dry ice and water explosion set off by one of the neighborhood teens that you paid off in weed and beer, perhaps – which will allow you to break the case and take the book. Remember to carefully replace it with a bag of sand that you brought with you, so as not to set off the weight detectors.

I leave the escape from the building as an exercise for the reader.

Or, if that’s too much trouble, you can go to the Trinity College website, where they have the whole thing digitized in high resolution. If you’re lazy, that is. Here’s the page I eventually ended up working from:

Book of Kells - Page 292v

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Ink Drop for March 2016

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Okay, I need to get less lazy about these, or this’ll just be an Ink Drop blog. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

The Ink Drop from our good friends at Goulet Pens this month was “Monarch Madness,” which I’m given to understand is some kind of sports reference. That aside, however, it’s a set of five royal inks, all blues and purples that should serve you well. So let’s look at ’em!

2016.03 Ink Drop

Man, that got real feathery, didn’t it? It was done on paper meant for manga art, so maybe that doesn’t sit well with fountain pen inks. We learn a new thing every day.

Most of this is Diamine, which has been on a nice streak of inks recently. I’m going to a fountain pen show tomorrow, and will probably have my scanners set for Diamine so that I can buy more inks that I technically do not need. Huzzah!

Tyrian Purple is an interesting light purple, probably not one that I would use in an everyday fountain pen. That’s mostly because I don’t really want to write in purple, but your preferences may vary. Anyway, this is a very reddish-purple that is reminiscent of the ancient purple that got made from snails. Not a bad pedigree, so you might want to use it for that alone.

Imperial Purple is closer to what I think of as Purple – closer to blue than red, and something of the color of Grimace or grape soda. If purple ink is your thing, I’d say this is the way to go.

Of the three blues, I would use any of them in an everyday pen. Regency Blue is quite dark, but still blue enough to be classy and distinct. Majestic Blue is a little lighter, but still within the realm of respectability as a blue ink, and Noodler’s Kung Te-Cheng is the kind of faded blue that you would see on your classier type of Chinese porcelain. Any of these three will do you if you’re a blue ink writer.

So, overall a nice set of inks this month. Not sure which ones are going to get used in calligraphy – probably all of them at some point – but I do know I have to use better paper.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ink Drop for February 2016

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It’s the middle of the month, which means that it’s time for another Ink Drop! Once again, I’m referring to my list of fictional companies. It adds a new dimension of entertainment for me, and I hope for you as well.

2016.02 Ink Drop

The Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire and the Iroshizuku Ajisai are fairly indistinguishable from each other, with the Sapphire being ever so slightly more purple than blue. That’s fine, though, seeing as how they’re both fine blues to write with. The Ajisai, given its name, beautifully reflects the color of hydrangeas, if that’s your thing.

The Burgundy and Bordeaux are also very close pairs and, as per their names, quite reminiscent of wine. The Burgundy is a little bit darker, but if you’re looking for something in a nice pinkish-red to write with, these will do nicely.

As for the Private Reserve, I have to confess a bias against brown inks. Most of them, with the usual exception of walnut ink, tend to strike me as unpleasantly… fecal. There are often undertones of yellow and green that just rub me the wrong way. That said, they don’t come out too strongly in this ink, at least not when written normally. As per the name, it has a chocolaty darkness that makes it almost black but not quite. If I were in the market for a brown ink, I’d probably go with this one.

So there they are – this month’s inks, all flowers, wine and chocolate. Enjoy it!

What’re your thoughts? Put ’em in the comments!