Reflecting on my week #112

I’ve been looking for our next trip away recently, well, since we came back from Barbados. There’s nothing like having your next jaunt booked and ready to go, is there? Only thing is, I didn’t know where we wanted to go. But then again I rarely do.

Given that I’m looking at something for February, I think my options are pretty limited. I was thinking sensible, and perhaps something close to home. Somewhere that we’d not been to or explored before, though I think MOH a thought I’d lost it when I suggested Kent or Surrey. I mean there’s nothing wrong with either of those, it’s just they’re day trip places.

We don’t often day trip there of course, but we could. I found some lovely cottages, some quirky, some modern and some more traditional. I quite fancied Dungeness, but then reconsidered for the time of year.

Browsing holiday cottages, and companies, is I’ve discovered addictive and as I’m discovering choice, or too much of it, can be a great immobiliser. So nothing got booked, but we’ve still some holiday to use. Then yesterday the Sunday paper had dedicated its travel section to France, and a spark, was ignited.

We haven’t been to France for absolutely ages, and I blooming love France. So, hopefully later today I’ll be booking a two night midweek stay in Lyons, which I was surprised that we’d not been too before. It looks a historic and gastronomic delight so perhaps it will be just the incentive I need to kickstart my 5:2 attempts again.

I don’t mind the intermittent fasting so much, but it needs careful meal planning, especially when this time round there’s absolutely no need for MOH to take part. Though if you remember from before he thought a tuna cheese melt was perfectly fine for ‘fast’ days!

It’s definitely a watch this space - the France trip, I mean, though there won’t be the traditional “fill your car boot up with wine” activity this time, which is a shame as they were always good day trips.

It was back to work for me last week, and not having been around since 12 December it was quite a shock to my system, and quite full on too. In the last few days of my extended break I got my lettering pens out again to make a couple of cards. Now they’ve been delivered I thought I’d share them here - I’m pleased with them, and hope their recipients were too.

Out on errands on Saturday we were disrupted by the screeching of the noisy parakeets which are prevalent in Greenwich Park. I’d not seen them so close to home before, but perhaps they’re expanding their patch even further. Who knows.

They definitely bring a spot of colour, and you certainly know they’re there.

A year in calligraphy: My 2020 calendar

Towards the end of last year a lettering spark was reignited and I tried some brush lettering for the first time in a long while, and I mean decades. I quickly remembered how much I’d enjoyed it before, though the more modern craft is called lettering rather than calligraphy, which does sound a bit more fuddy-duddy, the difference though is more than an update.

Lettering is drawing the letters, so more of a faux calligraphy. Calligraphy uses a ‘dip pen’ and the pressure applied informs the strokes of the letters created. Either way, the results are fantastic looking words.

I’m no expert, but I know that like most things, practice makes perfect, and so I hoped for some brush pens and some guidance in the form of a couple of books this Christmas, and I wasn’t disappointed. The books both take different approaches too, one’s much more hands on and contains projects, templates and exercises - that’s Kirsten Burke’s A Year in Calligraphy from the Modern Calligraphy Co, the other, Brush Lettering by Rebecca Cahill Roots of Betty Etiquette, is devoted to Brush Lettering.

I do love a good book to browse after lunch on Christmas Day, and both of these met that brief.

I was keen to get started, and impatiently waiting until we’d returned home. And where else to start but the first project of the year in Kirsten’s book, which as you’ve probably already guessed is a calendar.

I’m a book traditionalist and it felt a bit weird pulling out the perforated pages, let alone actually writing in the work book sections. However I overcame my instincts, including the one to only use pencil in the book, and set about making my calendar.

What I quickly learnt was, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

While the month headings were pre-printed in a pale grey meaning they could be easily traced over, the numbers needed to be created from scratch. There’s lots of guidance, but you’re still on your own. My patient self would have practiced, but my patient self doesn’t really exist so in I dived.

January’s numbers were freeform, and not too bad, but I had to remind myself that the point of this wasn’t about freeform. And so for the subsequent months I aimed to copy examples from both of the books, and from a much older calligraphy book I pulled from my bookcase. I tried a variety of pens too from the thin end of a brush pen, a felt tip, a marker and a fine liner to see which worked best.

Unsurprisingly the metallic marker I used for March gave me the most problems for “fitting the numbers in the boxes” and despite what it may look like, we’re not having a 39th March this year.

I also learnt that swirls on numbers are hard to keep consistent - see April - and after writing lots of numbers, somewhere around the 19 April I lost count, and almost had two of those, which would have made for a really long month!

Recognising the limits of my concentration - I’d like to say it was four months, but really it was about 3 point something worth of months - I decided to stick with the first four months of the year for this project, for now. It’ll be interesting to return to this - hopefully sometime before May arrives - to see if there’s a noticeable difference or not.

I’m pleased with how these turned out, so expect to see these month cards in various Instagram posts, as now that I have them I’m definitely planning to make the most of them.

Trying some brush lettering

* This post contains items that were gifted by the London Graphic Centre

It was good to take things a little slower this last weekend, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to test out those dual ended Brush pens and pigment liners which I received as part of the parcel from the London Graphic Centre, which they sent for the purposes of this review.

As I said in yesterday’s post, lettering - or calligraphy, as we called it then - has been a craft I’ve always been partial too, but along the way, a bit like actually writing it’s fallen by the wayside. There’s a new magazine out which I’ve been eyeing up, which has reignited my interest, so when the London Graphic Centre asked what crafts I liked, there was no hesitation.

I’m a bit rusty though. But that hasn’t stopped me, as they say, practice makes perfect. And if it doesn’t bring perfection, it definitely brings confidence and enjoyment and improvement. I’ve seen that even in a just short time. I started small, and then moved onto some practice sheets - the less said about the Fs the better.

As impatient as ever though, I wanted to try to create a quote and add some colour blending. It may sound like running before I could walk, but I was pleased with the results - friends and family can now expect ‘lettered’ cards. Just saying.

I decided that I could create beautiful results, and build my confidence, by tracing the quotes and the Marker Pad sent by the London Graphic Centre was just the thing as the outline of the quote was easily visible, and with it held in place by some pretty washi tape, I was off.

There is beauty in everything.

it’s true, there is - and this was something I reminded myself as some of my lettering was wider than the quote I was copying from - but I’m human, not a machine, and even the neatest writer has variations in their lettering, I’m sure. As you can tell, I was keen to move onto the colour blending part.

For the quote above I went freehand adding the yellow and lilac pastel colours on top of the pastel pink with great results. If you know me, you’ll know pink and orange is one of my current favourite colour combinations, including my hair (only a section of it as all over might be a bit too much even for me). My hairdressers have a bowl of retro sweets on the reception desk, and I always fish out the Fruit Salads, giving the Black Jacks a wide berth. On my last visit my hairdresser made the connection between the sweets and my hair dye combo, which really is quite unintentional, but no bad thing!

Realising that I’d hit on this winning colour blending combination through pure chance and personal preference, i wondered which other colours would work. Not wanting to mess up any great (or even not too bad) artworks, a key was needed, and quickly created.

COLOUR BLENDING - MY PASTEL GUIDE

It’s already proven to be really useful. And I suspect as my brush pen collection grows, let’s face it - it’s going to, it will be added to.

I wanted to try more though, so found another quote - Today is the perfect day to be be happy - and off I set again. I thought I’d try this one using the pigment liners, but being such a colour fan, I couldn’t bring myself to do a plain black and white version.

Overall, I’ve had a productive weekend, and a great reintroduction to lettering. I’ve done more than these two, and am already seeing improvements and bravery with the colours, but more on that another day.

And look, I even attempted to conquer my fear of Fs. Perfect (well, good enough).

* With thanks to the London Graphic Centre for providing the materials used in this post, for the purposes of this review.