Friday, August 21, 2009

Fancy Letters

I have always wanted to be able to do fancy lettering and doodles like Anita Davies does on her blog. I asked her once where she learned and she said that she has always done it.

Many years ago I learned two calligraphy alphabets. Chancery and Uncial. Chancery is very pretty but I was drawn more to the quirkier Uncial. I took classes with a local parks department for a few weeks. They never offered the classes again as far as I know. I would have taken more to learn further alphabets.

But the kind of lettering I want to be able to do is more like people do in their journals. I think it makes the journaling pages so much more interesting. Anita just seems to have the knack for it. A curley Q here or there; a spilled drop or two of ink. It just works for her. For me, it would probably look like I spilled the ink and tried to make it look ok.

I found a site that offers lessons for $20. I'm not sure if I would want to try that. I'm not sure how much I would get from the lessons. Plus right now money is tight and I don't need to spend on unnecessary things. And whether I want it so or not, lessons are not a necessity. There was a free sample lesson and I received it.

So the last couple of days, I have been practicing in my sketchbook. It's fun.

2 comments:

Teresa said...

Why don't you check out some of many free fonts available and use them as a pattern? There are lots out there and I often follow the basic design when I do hand lettering... much more interesting than my own scrappy handwriting!

jgr said...

Hi Jeanne,
I'm taking a great online calligraphy class with Martha Lever, using brush markers. It's really fun. Her blog is Art du Jour and there is a preview of the class. You can link to her from my blog list if you're interested.