Day two - Martin Jackson workshop

Layout and Design
Building on what we did in Day one, we moved on to looking at ways to make our beautiful letters look good in a design. The day was one of questions. When you have a project in front of you and a nice white, blank sheet of paper, what do you do? What is the project? a poem? a card? a poster? a quote? knowing that will help decide what size of paper to use. Should it be in a horizontal format or a vertical? would it look good done in a circle? a poem - then you can use a flush left format or maybe you prefer the look of a centered poem. Are the words happy? humourous? sad? When you have answered some of these questions, it is time to start working with thumbnails. These are a great tool to help with what your piece will eventually look like. Martin's approach to layout and design is to use onion skin paper which is really quite impossible to find these days, or tracing paper which isn't near as good. Write your words out in lines and then using the onion skin paper, trace over the words in a pleasant layout, your eye decides what pleasant looks like. Once you have a good looking piece on onion skin, it is time to take it to a light table and transfer it on to your good paper. Lots of questions and lots of possibilities to attempt. Anything that you are pleased with.....Margot will accept it for the exhibition!!

Here are a few photos taken before my camera battery died. I am still learning how to use my camera and have decided that I really don't like the feature that tells you that your battery is about to die instead of letting you check periodically to see if you are close.....

Nan working on a layout for an alphabet.



Martin's desk



Wilma working on numbers



Jean's circle writing



Frank writing names



Eileen's work space, and a nice numbers layout



Martin demonstrating writing in a circle



group photo, missing Jean the photographer and Joyce who wasn't able to attend the second day. Day one she had a bit of a tickle in her throat, by day two, she had a frog. Hope she's feeling better now.

Next up will be our November meeting where we explore Copperplate with Joyce leading us. Remember! potluck lunch, bring something to share for lunch and your own plate and cutlery.