Monday 3 February 2014

FMP (BA): Calligraphy Exercise - "My Thoughts Are Stars I Cannot Fathom Into Constellations"

The Final Outcome



The Process

Even though I'm nowhere near finished with my research I wanted to experiment with calligraphy from what I've learnt through my analysis and the YouTube tutorials I had watched a few days ago. It is better for me to work this way because the ideas and inspiration is fresh in my mind, and I might continue to do this when I take a look at different type styles.

I'm not quite sure what quotes I want to use yet so I just used one of my favourites from "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green. I wanted to have another stab at the embrace-your-handwriting idea that I attempted previously, focusing on the layout of each word first.

One of the main reasons why I want to do hand-lettering was to reflect the delicacy of the book; it tells the story of a girl and her boyfriend who both have cancer, and as I don't want to give away any detailed spoilers all I can say is that it had a very sad ending. This was one of the quotes that really stood to me when I was reading it because it shows the mind of the novelist within the story that the girl was inspired by.  


Once I was satisfied with my layout I decided to look at how to make some of the 'main' letters more elaborate to provide a bit of character to the quote. I don't want it to be plain, and I wanted to experiment! Looking at my layout I highlighted M, t, f and s. I created some lines across the paper and started to play around with different swash styles.


Now I want to put everything I've done together and wrote out the whole quote, ignoring the layout I had produced earlier. This is so that I can have a look at the words as a whole to see if my different swash styles would work. It also helps me out because I am able to focus more on the type rather than the overall layout. The layout could always be done at a later stage. 
After this I made some notes and wanted to make the I more elegant, so just did some really quick sketches beside it.



With that done, I am ready to try out this quote with different pens. I first tried out fountain pen, then a Rotring Art Pen, then two types of Dip Pens. I wrote little notes beside each experiment.



I'm actually getting better at using the dip pen which was a really nice surprise, and I want to try out some more but for now I think I'll just go and use my micron because it went really smoothly and achieved the exact effect I was looking for. On a separate piece of paper I sketched out my layout within the dimensions that the book would be, and started to sketch. Once the sketch was done I did it with two different thickness in micron pens and then drew some stars to fill in the gaps.



The Final Piece



Reflective Learning - Summary
Here I was able to experiment with pens and also with my handwriting. I never thought of using my actual handwriting in a design before so I was pleasantly surprised to see how well it turned out. It was simple, yet had a character to it because of the fact that it was 100% perfect and it was personal because I actually wrote it out.

It was really nice to spend a few hours just trying out a style and I found it really enjoyable, especially because the end result was what I was aiming for. I was really inspired by Hardink Calligraphy's design that I wrote about here and the 'free' style, and I thought that this would reflect the free nature of stars and the person's thoughts.

The most important thing I've learnt about this situation is that it's okay to experiment with something and having it not turn out as expected. What I should've done is practised a bit more with them so that when it comes to using them for a quote it would be more successful than it had been for this one.
On the other hand, at least I have tried my dip pens out and have learnt how to work with them! I guess this just means that I need to practice a lot more.

My next step is to look at a different type style but I might come back to this one to see what else I can do with it! It's quite interesting, experimenting with different pens only to realise that my own handwriting was good enough.

Learning Outcomes:
[7] Developed their ability to learn through reflection on practice and experience.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.

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