Messages

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: January 17, 2023, 05:39:31 PM »

The "Arctic Blast" drawing celebrates the John Beargrease Dog Sled Marathon. At 400 miles, it's the longest dog sled race in the lower 48 and a qualifier for the Iditarod. The race starts on the last Sunday of January at Billy's Bar, just up the street from us here in Duluth, then runs along the North Shore of Lake Superior, through the Sawtooth Mountains, and finishes at Grand Portage, up by the Canadian border - it's named after John Beargrease (Makwabimidem in Anishinaabe), a winter mail carrier up in these parts who ran his postal route in a dog sled during the late 19th century. The starting festivities are always a blast with the cutest puppy contest, the ice sculptures, day drinking at Billy's, and a community that enjoys the winter.

This drawing one of my favorites in the series. Great snow, aurora borealis? Even feels chilly, @K-2

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: January 16, 2023, 05:26:13 PM »

19. Silent Night (standard) - a dark, heavily saturated indigo blue-black ink with gorgeous chromatography, bleeding out violet, cyan, and smokey grey, with a clean white reaction to bleach. Nice line control for broad edge and pointed pen. Some hints of a dark red-black sheen in the most heavily saturated spots.

Portraits are, to me, the hardest thing to draw. Very well done. How do you come up with your subjects for these drawings, @K-2 ? Always topical.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: January 12, 2023, 04:55:20 PM »

The drawing depicts the Erechtheion - the Temple to Athene in the Athens Acropolis, with its sacred olive tree, said to be the spot where the goddess Athene herself planted the first olive tree.

A perfect drawing for this ink. Beautiful, @K-2

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: January 06, 2023, 09:40:27 AM »

I'm back!  And while I will still be somewhat pokey about posting, I'll keep going until the end!

Great. Looking forward to it, @K-2

15. Pick Me Up (scent & sheen) - smells (sort of) like coffee!  A rich, saturated, warm dark brown with green sheen, bleeding out a gorgeous array of cocoas, salmons and pinks, with mint green haloing in the chromatography.  A white-gold reaction to bleach, decent hairlines on the pointed pen script, and good definition on the broad-edge scripts.

What a lovely ink to draw with! Check out the tonal variation and chromatography here! Despite having a brown base, it is not one of the "boring inks". I'm smitten! In consideration of the coffee themed/colored/scented ink, I did a drawing of the Kona coast - where my favorite coffee comes from. My aunt & uncle lived on the Hilo side of the Big Island, and it was always a special treat to get 100% pure Kona coffee when we visited them.

Very nice drawing--so peaceful.

Kona coffee is a favorite here too, but the cost ($50+/lb) keeps it from being a daily drinker.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: January 06, 2023, 09:26:39 AM »

@Estefa - I have a German colleague who is looking at documents in Sütterlin for her work in music history.  She's not familiar with the script, and the writer was a native English speaker who was living in Germany, writing in German, so there are lots of errors in the German text. Maybe I can refer her to you?

@Aries M @AnasaziWrites - and to anyone else still following along... Thank you for being patient with me!

16. Serendipity (shimmer & sheen) - a dark teal (teal! @Erica McPhee ), saturated enough to make shading a bit difficult, with some very slight hints of chromatography, bleeding out pale blue and pigeon grey. Red sheen and rose gold shimmer!  white-gold reaction to bleach!  steady line control with broad edge and pointed pen scripts!  What's not to like?

[cw: pedantry] @Zivio
The drawing honors the etymology of "Serendipity" which first enters the English lexicon in 1754, coined by Horace Walpole in a letter to Horace Mann, as a reference to a Persian fairy tale known in English as "The Three Princes of Serendip" (an English version was published in 1722) whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of" [Walpole]. Serendip, (also Serendib), attested by 1708 in English, was an old name for Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, from Arabic Sarandib, from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa "Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island." /pedantry

So this is a picture of Danuka Ariyawansa, an award winning Kandyan dancer (a symbol of Sri Lankan heritage) from Sri Lanka

Yep, still here, and following your wonderful drawings.

A little less participation from me, as I struggle to arrange a schedule that will move me closer to achieving my goals for 2023 and beyond (not all of which have been mentioned here--not really related to calligraphy). I really have to be more efficient in managing my time and diminishing energy.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Calligraphy Goals in 2023

« on: December 31, 2022, 12:59:52 PM »

One of my daughters (it was actually her husband’s idea…bless his heart) gave me an engraver for Christmas!!… and my youngest daughter is getting married this fall!…so I think I have too many goals to count! LOL!

That's very interesting. At the Iampeth convention this summer, I tried one of Kestrel's engravers (inkmethis.com) and was thinking this past week I might get one. Which one did you get?

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Calligraphy Goals in 2023

« on: December 31, 2022, 12:55:13 PM »

In looking over my "goals," I realize I've fallen into the trap of making them so vague as to making it impossible to say if I've reached them or not. They are more like desires than goals, so

1. Learn Spanish (this doesn't really involve calligraphy, but I mentioned it before, so I'll include it here again) becomes If I decide to learn Spanish, at the end of 12 months, be able to speak and understand simple sentences, and know the definition of the 500 most common words. I'll be looking at online and if available in person courses to do this.

2. Improve my Spencerian. This is difficult to measure. Any little improvement could be said to achieving the goal, but my standard will be to create a piece that I would be proud to frame and hang on my own wall, or of such quality that it would not look out of place in in Michael Sull's Spencerian Script and Ornamental Penmanship in the opinion of a master penman.

3. Learn Kurrent better means being able to write in Kurrent without need to refer to an exemplar, that is, write letters/compositions in English fluidly using Kurrent, having ingrained the forms well enough to not think about it, as I do in writing English.

4. Learn French or German Ronde, to which I'd add half uncial @K-2 , which means create a piece or pieces using this hand judged to be at least good by someone qualified to so judge (hard to do yourself , I think).

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Calligraphy Goals in 2023

« on: December 29, 2022, 01:42:27 PM »

Anyone setting some new year’s calligraphy goals? Mine is to continue working on Copperplate and Spencerian and do more off-hand flourishing.  Specifically, I would like to work more on composition and creating finished pieces.

I think I'll try to learn Kurrent a bit better, so that I can at least read the words even if I don't know what they mean, which implies increasing my German vocabulary as well. Some of the capital forms are not intuitive, and I must check my exemplars for correct form at this point.
Improve my Spencerian is always on the list.
Maybe learn Spanish?
Maybe learn German or French Ronde?
Haven't quite decided.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: December 25, 2022, 01:31:47 PM »

Best Wishes

Day 25

Interesting chameleon ink--Both green and brown, some blue and red too. Amazing.

Merry Christmas everyone.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: December 24, 2022, 11:28:01 AM »

One more Sleep

Day 24

A standard ink, similar to Arctic Blast without the fireworks. Bleeds to sky blue and dusky rose. Really thin--needs gum arabic to make shades wider than the "O". The attempt in the "S" left uncorrected to show what happens--blob or railroading--when wider shades made with pointed pen. Nothing really special with this ink, similar to many others in the blue/violet family, although @K-2 will do something special with it I'm sure, as time allows.

Looking forward to the big bottle on Day 25. Hope it's something special.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Happy Holidays - exchange spoiler alert

« on: December 23, 2022, 09:49:47 PM »

Received and hugely appreciated. Beautiful.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: December 23, 2022, 05:36:40 PM »

Celebration

Day 23

A sheen ink bleeds to orange/pink. A little like Flame, but redder and with sheen. Needs gum arabic unless the shades are small with pointed pen. A nice addition to the red family.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: December 23, 2022, 11:50:33 AM »

The drawing is a quick and free, rather impressionistic sketch of Köln Cathedral, where the bones and crowns of the Three Kings of the bible's Nativity story reside in a golden reliquary.  While the foundations of the cathedral were laid in the mid-13th century, it was largely completed in the 19th century.  I hope it satisfies the desire for a more interesting use for a boring ink!

@K-2
Ah, the largest gothic cathedral in Europe. I first saw it in 1971, at night, from a ship coming into Cologne. It was all lit up and was the most beautiful building I had ever seen (at that time). I think you captured the essence of it.

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: December 23, 2022, 11:39:12 AM »

Glad to see you pop up in this thread, @Tasmith - I've also got questions about the Kurrent that @AnasaziWrites is using. A colleague of mine asked me to look into the Kurrent variant called "Sütterlin" the other day, since she's working on a historical figure that wrote his diary entries using it. Sütterlin was sort of the Spencerian of Germany, developed in the early 1900s, so a bit later than the script from 1846 in your wife's family bible, Mike - But if you're as good at reading this script as you are writing it, maybe you'd be interested in helping out a scholar? - its a music history project.

@K-2
I'm really just a beginner in Kurrent, and although fluent in German at one time, it's mostly rusted away now, so wouldn't be of much help.
But we do have an expert on the forum--Estefa on FF, Stephanie Weigele, a graphic designer and calligrapher from Germany, who actually teaches Kurrent.
Here's her blog:
https://www.instagram.com/federflugcalligraphy/

Kurrent lasted for centuries in Europe, ending in WWII in Germany at Hitler's order. I'm learning the version popular in the 1870's from two books published by E. Steiger & Co, NY--actually two versions of essentially the same book, Ahn's Rudiments of the German language, Division One, meant for the two lowest grades of pupils--so first and second grade. One book has a little English in it (pub. 1873), and the other only German (pub. 1871). I also have 30 or so examples of letters/documents made around that time, and two superb pieces by Verharne published in the first quarter of the 19th century (on a level skillwise to Bickham's Universal Penman).

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Tools & Supplies / Re: Diamine Inkvent 2022

« on: December 22, 2022, 05:38:51 PM »

Spruce

Tried about 6 different papers with this ink, sealed and unsealed, and the TomoeRiver 68gm was the best. All the others bled, more or less. Please excuse the crudeness of this writing, as the ink was running off the nib like a gushing firehose. Don't have time just now to experiment with gum arabic, which should allow for better thins. Like the color and was surprised at the red sheen.

Edit to add a second image.
The key to using this ink with a pointed pen seems to be shaking it up vigorously just before writing,which seems to increase the viscosity enough to lessen the tendency to blurb out, particularly in making shades. Works pretty good monoline, if shaken, and pretty good with shaded script, as long as the shades aren't too large. I tried adding a bunch of gum arabic--18 drops per 3 ml--and it still blurbed if not shaken. Second image on untreated bristol smooth after shaking.

Kurrentschrift?  First time I saw this was as a kid looking at a family bible from the 1850s brought over by my German ancestors.  I remember thinking, "What language is this, I thought they were German?"    I guess I expected Black Letter or Gothic.

Similar to you, @Tasmith , I first saw it from a bible my wife's forebears brought with them from Prussia dated 1846.