ID: Pan Pastel - Oyster
Size: 11"w x 17"h

Weight & Texture Class
with Wendy Diedrick

Created: September 21, 2008

I had a wonderful time in Wendy's class on Sept 13 & 14, 2008. I normally don't do long pieces of Calligraphy, preferring doing smaller quotes. But for this class we were asked to do something that had about 100, or a bit less, words in it. Well if you make a mistake in this, that's a lot of "doing over again"...

I started out with Arches Text Wove and did a Pan Pastel background. First time I've tried it on Text Wove, and I have to say, not easy. Text wove has a fuzzy texture to  the paper and so the Pastels don't glide over the paper like they do with smoother papers. But as you can see, it did work out OK. I did not "fix" the paper before (or after) doing my calligraphy.

I used an eraser to create the "white" or lighter areas and the horizontal lines. That was put in to help me keep my calligraphy on an even keel (big grin), and also as a decorative element.

I used a Mitchell 2.5  nib and Sumi Moon Palace black ink in an loose Italic style for the main body of the poem and a 2.4 Parallel Pen, same ink, for the larger Funky Neuland type lettering.

I altered the poem a bit to fit the size I needed.

Detail

Poem: There was once an oyster whose story I tell, who found that some sand had got under his shell it was only a grain, but it gave him great pain
he didn't complain
No - he said to himself as he lay on a shell, since I cannot remove it, I shall try to improve it
& then he became a stew.
And the small grain of sand that had bother him so was a beautiful pearl all richly aglow. Now the tale has a moral; for isn't it grand what an oyster can do with a morsel of sand.
What couldn't we do
If we'd only begin
with some of the things
that got under our skin. author unknown

ID: "No Lies"
Size: 8"w x 10"h

This was a spur of the moment piece. After I finished the Oyster piece I had a bit of time left over and gave a mini demo to Wendy on the Pan Pastels. I didn't do any pre drawing or lettering. I just did it straight on the paper... I can't say it's a sellable piece, but I did have fun. Used the flat edge of the eraser to create some of the words and then a Mitchell nib like above.