Alphabeas: February 2014

Workshop News!
What is it with February and Barbara Close?! it snows! Now, Barbara may love it but this time it just didn't know when to quit. When she arrived on Friday afternoon, it was beautifully sunny, not overly warm, but it is February, remember! By Saturday morning, it was snowing but not sticking to the ground, by Sunday, participants were wondering if we were going to cancel!! A foot of snow here in such a short time was really not a welcome event. Having Barbara come to teach was a great event!

No matter, the weather didn't dampen our enthusiasm! As a start to preparing ourselves for another upcoming workshop in November, Barbara was here to get us going with pointed pen magic.

We began Saturday morning learning Copperplate. It takes a lot of discipline! and concentration but everyone came through it just fine, with a new respect for pointed pens.
In order to break out of the box, one must learn the rules. We were soon on to seeing how to relax our letters and bring freedom into them by making them more contemporary.
By Sunday morning we were ready to make some art to go with our work! This part was a good review of some of the things we have done with Barbara before - always a great reminder!


creating the artwork


showing the possible layouts of a quote


masking an area to paint and create some artwork to go with a quote

work in progress


first draft

We created a portfolio to keep our projects in and the show and tell at the end of the day with a critique of our work is always very helpful and this workshop was no exception.

Another successful weekend! Thank you Barbara and all who attended.

February has been voted out as a possible workshop month! I think it will be good if we move it to May! more flowers, less snow!

In February, our program was to revisit the Ruling Pen. This is the Haff pen mostly used by Thomas Hoyer, Louie Lemoine, Rosemary Buczek and other calligraphy instructors. It is an old drafting or engineering tool used, for ruling lines!! And works very well for that purpose, I might add!

Our primary goal was to get as many spatters as possible from the pen and to find out what marks are possible with this tool. Using walnut ink and Strathmore Drawing or Sketch paper, this happens fairly easily...

Lettering is easily achieved with it as well......

It is a fun tool! play with it! it makes strange and interesting marks!

Our January 2014 program saw us exploring the Button Alphabet originally designed by Peter Thornton and now taught by Louis (sometimes Louie) Lemoine. Our members, Violet and Shannon had recently taken a workshop with him in Vancouver and kindly shared what they had learned.

The letters were originally done to use on a conference button for the name of the participants. It works very well for that! Using either the widest Zig marker or the widest Parallel pen, this is an easy hand to learn and add to one's expertise. It looks fun on envelopes - there again - best suited for the name and not the address as they aren't the easiest of letters to read and we do want our mail to get to its destination quickly!

Thank you to Violet and Shannon for sharing!

December saw us gathered for our annual Christmas luncheon and card exchange. Thank you Val for opening her home once again. Looks like a wonderful gathering to celebrate the season!

Not only are we a group of lettering artists, but we have watercolourists in our midst as well..... this is just a sampling of the cards we exchanged in 2013.