Seeing Myself in Print and Online

I am very excited to announce that I have been published again, both online and in print. An envelope I did was included in a new calligraphy book, and an article I wrote is the current blogpost for Paper and Ink Arts!

It was a good mail day at my house recently. My new copy of Bound and Lettered (with articles about and by some friends and colleagues of mine) arrived along with my publisher's copy of Peter Taylor's new book, Calligraphy for Greetings Cards and Scrapbooking. Peter's publisher sent me a copy because I have an envelope in it. What fun to see my work in print again! And what a nice book to see it in.

I quickly turned to the index to see if my name was listed - it is!

And here is the simply scripted envelope that was requested - no elaborate flourishing, just a clean simple script. (I wish I'd taken a better photo.)

To order Peter's book: If you put the title, Calligraphy for Greetings Cards and Scrapbooking in a search engine, you'll probably find several online stores offering copies at a range of prices with a range of publication dates. Some are saying 'pre-order - published June or October 2012', but all sources should soon have them available.

Publisher's site (the price printed on the cover, probably plus delivery) - available now.

Amazon UK - cheaper - free UK delivery with supersaver (if buying more than one copy or other books as well) available now with delivery overseas possible.

Book Depository - Good price (the best price?) as it includes free delivery worldwide - available now.

Amazon.com - cheapest price, but says pre-order for release in October.

I have ordered books from both the Book Depository and Amazon.com with no problems.

According to Peter, this book contains advice, alphabets and images intended to encourage beginners to begin their calligraphic journey. He hopes it will encourage beginners to pick up and use pens rather than buy pre-cut lettering and rubber stamps for all of their projects. More experienced calligraphers will also find many ideas. From my first perusal of the book, it is exactly what it's meant to be, and will be a good resource for instructors as well. The skeleton alphabet is very nice with excellent instruction, as are many of the other alphabets included in the book, such as Celtic, Neuland and Versals. There are good instructions for embossing, making pens from bamboo and balsa wood - including making reservoirs for the bamboo pens - and many other practical tips for calligraphers and craftsmen of all skill levels. As the name implies, it has tips for making greeting cards and for scrapbooking too. It would make an excellent gift for a young person (or anyone) who wants to learn calligraphy or how to make greeting cards.



In other news, it's fun for me that an article I wrote for Paper And Ink Arts is on their blog this month. It's about the Fons and Porter white mechanical quilting pencil - wonderful for ruling lines on dark papers because it erases without a trace. Photos showing projects with lines and with lines erased are included. I'm currently working on a project on silver envelopes, so the pencil is a godsend. You will be able to access this article by scrolling down through more current ones if you're reading this after a new blogpost is up. Recent articles there include excellent tutorials on various topics. The blog is well worth a visit. I am pleased to be in the good company of the previous writers.

Yves Leterme, Here I Come!

I am looking forward to attending a workshop sponsored by the Memphis Calligraphy Guild and taught by Belgian calligrapher, Yves Leterme. I first saw Yves Leterme's work a few years ago in Louisville at Laurie Doctor and Steve Skaggs' "Five from Four" exhibit. The 'five' were five calligraphic artists (Monica Dengo, Maya Huber, Steve Skaggs, Laurie Doctor and Yves Leterme) and the 'four' referred to the four countries they are from.
As a means of explaining his work, here is Yves' artist statement from that show: My work has passed through some stages to arrive where it is today. Having spent a decade mastering and refining letterforms and classical scripts, I turned my attention towards composition and painting techniques. My early works show clear, legible texts on colorful, unusually structured backgrounds. I wanted to arrive at a happy marriage between abstract paintings and gestural or drawn lettering. Due to the gesso and the many layers of pigments involved in this technique, the backgrounds tended to have a rough texture, and this forced me to abandon the fine gestural and formal writing of nibs and to work instead with brush or pencil. Then, later on, not entirely satisfied with this combination of rude painting and fine calligraphy, I decided I had to show more daring in order to get the harmony between the elements I was looking for. Therefore, I deliberately alter characters to the point they become hardly legible or downright illegible. Very often now I prefer the awkwardness of rude letters to the elegant writing I used to do. There’s beauty in rudeness, but not all rudeness is beautiful. I find myself erasing lots of things because they don’t have the right clumsiness. However, I should add that although the text may not be readable, perhaps because of my philologist background I always choose my texts carefully. Very often the quotes reveal something about my vision on art and perfection. The work itself then is somewhat an illustration of the thoughts expressed in it.

One of my friends bought a few of his pieces (and I loved them!) when she took a workshop from him in Chicago a year or so ago, and I again saw some of his work in a Carmel Indiana gallery earlier this year. I did a couple of pieces using his 'style' of covering much of the background painting with a thin white coat of gesso, though I didn't attempt his gestural lettering style. This one won second place in Calligraphy at the Kentucky State Fair last year.

I ordered Yves' book, Thoughtful Gestures, to try to understand his style of working. His personal inscription is in Latin: Quid est enim dulcius otio litterato, which means, "What is more beautiful than letters?" Here is the cover of his book with the folded cover page opened out.

Here are a couple of pages from his book. I love his abstract style.

We will probably learn to do some of these gestural strokes.

We will probably do some of his backgrounds with gesso and letter on top and into them.

We may even do something like this whimsical airplane.

But I doubt we will do any body painting. Not on mine anyway - but if I looked like this...


A pdf of the Five From Four catalog is available here: www.meinweblog.net/calligraphics/wp/.../five_from_four.pdf

A Little Bit Techie: Facebook, Etsy, Pinterest, Flickr, Blogspot, website, Photoshop and Calligraphy

Let's get a little bit techie this week.

Have I told you about my new Facebook Fan Page? I believe it's now called a Facebook Business Page. I recently changed mine from Jan Hurst Calligraphy and Design to Louisville Calligraphy and Art. If you are on Facebook, please go have a look and LIKE my page. (I always 'like' businesses back that like my page.) I read that if I ever get to 1000 'likes', my Facebook page address will become much shorter and more easily recognizable. To paraphrase Sally Field's gushing Oscar acceptance speech, "Please Like me! Please really like me!" I'd love to get rid of all the ding-dang numbers in my FB page address, and I have a long way to go! Urging your friends to also 'like' my page would really be appreciated too.

Have I told you about my Etsy shop? Please visit me there too! Friends and fellow calligraphers Jen Redmer and Terry Gustafson Kempfert urged me to get on Etsy, as did Sandy Wright, my soon to be daughter in law, who spurs me to be more technology oriented. I've also been on Pinterest for quite a while now, but I'm still working on how to integrate all this technology. I haven't tried Flickr yet, but am told it's something I need to do. Blogs, websites, Facebook, etc. - so much to do, so much to learn.

If you're not on Facebook, it is a part of what's called the social media network. As such, it does have a lot of your personal information, which scares many off. As I understand it though, you can control how much you 'put out there'. I find it a wonderful means of staying connected to like minded friends and acquaintances, to stay informed and to inform others, and hopefully it will become a nice avenue to promote my business. I have both a 'regular' page where I interact with friends and acquaintances and the business page.

Pinterest is a free, fun place to see new ideas, lots of recipes, crafty ideas, wedding ideas, home decorating ideas, trash-to-treasure ideas...just a great idea machine all around. A caution - it is a time grabber, especially at first. You can easily get lost checking out so many 'boards'. Pinterest is like a virtual bulletin board or inspiration board where people can 'pin' things of interest to them. There has been some concern of late about copyright issues, but I think if you follow the guidelines you won't be in any trouble. Pinterest's founder is working on clearing up any vagueness. Though it's not meant to be primarily self-promotion, it does have a self-promotion aspect to it and works well to drive people back to your other online sites. (Again, I'm trying to learn more about that.) When I joined you had to be invited by another member. If that's still in force and you want an invitation, let me know.

Blogspot and Wordpress are two of the best known blogging sites. I started with Blogger/Blogspot and have a few blogs. I love to blog. In person, I don't 'talk' so much; online, I can be a talking fool. If you haven't done so already, please visit my other blogs. I have them all listed with clickable links at the top of this page and also top right. To come back to this page, simply press the left arrow button on your tool bar.

I started with one blog. Letterlady is the moniker I chose when I first started playing with online sites. Jan Hurst had a few takers already (You may find my name as a beer afficianado in the UK, a doctor associated with the University of Louisville, and a stripper, among others.) I have kept the letterlady designation as part of my online address in one form or another, incorporating it into the addresses of my main art blog: Letterlady's Letters, which you are reading now (thank you very much!) and my wedding blog: WeddingLetterlady. I have another (my original) blog which became more of a family blog two years ago when I became a grandmother. (If you want to see photos of the cutest two year old boy in the world - yes, I am biased - that is the place!) A few others have taken the letterlady name as well now, including a writer and another calligrapher. As an old tv commercial used to say, 'Do not be fooled. Buy the original.'

I was too slow on the website uptake to get my own domain with the letterlady designation. My website is a commercial one through Kodak called PictureTrail. Now that Kodak is in financial distress, I am not sure what may happen with the website: www.picturetrail.com/letterlady. I would like to learn to build my own website, but PictureTrail is so easy - and it lets you start for free until you outgrow the space. I now may have to upgrade for the second time, or cull my gigabyte-eating photos. Gigabyte is another techie term, but you probably already know that!

Besides social media, by which all of the aforementioned can be designated, I have been a Photoshopper and digital artist for many years. In 2003 I wrote an article for Somerset Studio magazine about my digital collages, which were a fairly new artform at the time. Coincidentally, my outside-of-the-home worklife ended soon after I wrote a story for the prestigious publication, Automobile Quarterly, about another digital artist, Robert Michaels. No, the two occurrences were not related.
Somerset Studio, Nov/Dec 2003:

Robert Michaels/AQ:

(Haven't we all learned so much, so fast!) Now, having had Ray Richie, a calligraphy and graphic artist friend to put a monogram I designed (duogram according to Crane's) into vector format so my client could use it in a large size, and seeing the much finer results obtained that way, I am determined to learn Illustrator one day - hopefully sooner than later.

Enough tech talk for one week. Back to the calligraphy desk! I don't know everything about these newish formats, but I will be happy to answer questions if I'm able. Comments and questions are always welcome!

Posted this blog earlier and can't believe I failed to mention the little bird, Twitter! Do you tweet?

Monogram, Pretty Mail, Certificates, and a Bible Inscription

This is a monogram I designed for a couple getting married later this year.

I've designed a few monograms and like it more each time. I am going to work on a monogram for myself, I think, and also a monogram for my son and soon to be daughter in law.

This is some recent mail. Clockwise from bottom left, the envelopes are from fellow calligraphers Kathy Laporte, Kathy Milii, Jody Meese and Jean Wilson. Pretty!

I recently filled in names, titles and dates on these certificates. I like designing certificates, but happily do fill ins like these too.

This Bible inscription was done as a Christmas gift.

Adoption Poem

One of my projects this week was this lovely adoption poem. It was lettered in a more casual script than I usually do. Long and narrow, it was made to fit a specific sized frame. The most difficult task was to keep the lettering legible while adding bounce and looseness. I compensated by making the interior lines of each stanza plainer than the upper and lower lines.

I love the poem, and have seen two versions of it. This is my favorite. I do not know the author's name.

Thanks to my personal photographer, Sandy Wright, for brightening my photo (above) to more closely match the original.

Here are some snippets of the piece: