Lettering on a Canvas Painting

A Christmas project began like this with a cute purchased painting printed on canvas. Wish I had painted the original - isn't it cute!

Though I do a lot of pointed pen calligraphy, I had never really done much with pointed brush lettering. After lots of study and practice I set brush to acrylic paint to canvas painting. To complement the cute painting, I wanted it to be looser than my usual pointed pen script style. I took the knowledge I gained from playing with the flat brush with calligrapher extraordinaire John Stevens at Cheerio in September and applied it to my pointed brush practice.

I was pretty well pleased with the lettering of the quote across the skirts, and with most of the names. Here is a close up of the first pass of the lettering across the skirts, with chalk pencil guidelines still in place.

But, phooey! I didn't like the second name. Looks a bit crowded upon itself, and too far from the first name. I was able to make the correction, totally removing that name and re-lettering it in a better position. Can you see the difference?

Here it is! "All done!" as my grandson says. The names and the quote on this painting represent two sisters and their daughters. When I was sure all the names were correctly spelled, I sprayed the canvas a couple of times with clear gloss acrylic to set the newly added lettering. What a fun project!

If you like this, check out my Keep This Ticket blog to see a painting I donated to help some talented young boys get to the NAMM show in California.

Older Work Revisited and a Monkey Painting

Because the holiday season is here and so busy, I'm sharing mostly older work today.
This one is from a cityscape in orange and blue. The only calligraphy on this one is the scratched into the paint scrawling shown in this detail.

And here is the piece in toto. I may gild the small yellow rectangle near the center to make it pop. (Do not adjust your monitor. The yellow wall behind the art is making everything look very yellow.)

Here is lettering detail from "Dreaming".

And here is the entire piece. There's a companion piece, much larger, that begs for bigger, bolder lettering. I may get back to it one day, but for now it's on my studio/den wall.

I love this piece I did in a Jacqueline Sullivan workshop years ago. I've always loved collage, and this Jacob's Ladder booklet was a nice twist. I hadn't done many tiny collages except as greeting cards, so it was fun to make nice work from scraps.

One side of the book.

I was criticized at an art show one year by a woman who couldn't understand why I'd used these colors for a piece about mercy. I hadn't thought of it, but I had mercy on her for being so critical. It won first place that year in the KY State Fair for calligraphy.

This is a little practice piece that I'm including because it happens to be on my desk right now. I love doing this pressurized Roman lettering.

The only current painting project at present: a monkey painting I'm working on for my grandson's bedroom. I hope I get it finished before Christmas. The foot needs some re-working and because it was done on a previously started canvas with lots of paint strokes on it, there will be some hiding and some highlighting of the colors underneath.