I had a straight afternoon in the park with my sketchpad – work in progress, a4:
Learning curves
The letter ‘g’ is not what you think it is.
When I was learning calligraphy, ‘g’ was one* of the stranger things I had to wrap my head around. Why does it curve like that? Nobody knows! It lurks in texts, an ambiguous little sound waiting to catch me out as my tired paws stick the belly curve on the wrong way round again. And then it finally makes its counter-intuitive way into your muscle memory, and I can start playing with it, and now that bizarre little loopy thing is one of my favourite letters, having two ends that can turn into great glorious flourishes or subtle little interlinks depending on the mood the pen is in.
*The real strangest thing about calligraphy is that you end up having favourite letters, which is both a sign of a troubled mind and a subject for another day.
Noise: Clair de Lune
This here is exquisite. I’ve loved this song ever since I first heard it, and the harp just adds an extra layer of floatyness to it.
World Poetry Day
It’s World Poetry Day, and some of my most memorable commissions are for hand-written poetry – here’s one from last summer, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18:
Written at 12″ x 16″ size, freehand.
Calligraphy box
I made this! No more coffee jars for pens, shoeboxes full of ink, or nappy boxes full of paper*
There’s space for paper, greetings cards, seven bottles of ink, a water jar, eight dip-pens and brushes, and a handful of pens, scalpels and stirrers.
Noise – Find me a cup!
If you’ve somehow missed this, you need it:
Penguin cover design post
This is a seriously dedicated long post by Josh McPhee on classic Penguin crime covers from the sixties, which of course I’m going to have to riff on heavily this week.
Noise – Dorothy Ashby
I have listened to about… thirty seconds of this, and need to share. I’ve never heard of Dorothy Ashby before in my life, but this is exactly why I love browsing music. Ace!