Art Elements’ challenge of February revolves around the romantic notion of letters. Adamant to show something other than jewellery I embarked on a Travel journal and lettering experiment this month. At the outset I must confess, that I have a bad hand writing. I attribute it to years of writing exams in school where speed was given more importance over the writing itself. My handwriting is not illegible – fashion school and years of teaching (+ writing on the board) saw to that, but it is nowhere close to where I want it to be. Also, I have no calligraphy tools – pens, brushes, nibs. Nada! Still, I chose to embark on a lettering experiment.
Why? Three reasons!
- I was so impressed by Hope (Of crafty Hope) and her journal and trading cards and was itching to try some of the techniques.
- I just finished teaching a “Colour psychology” workshop at school and had given a colour journal as the final assignment. As I always create/attempt atleast a portion of the assignment I give my students, I wanted to try my hand at it.
- There are books, texts, magazines that I collected for the purpose of making collages but never seem to have time to use them.
The sketch was done while I was on the Seine river cruise. I wrote the letters and did a colour wash on it this week.
Travel journal & Sketching
To the uninitiated, a travel journal is a notebook/set of papers/fabric that you use to write or sketch while travelling. It is filled during the journey or immediately after. You record your impressions of the places you have seen, people you have met and the experiences that you have had. A Travel journal (AKA old notebook) was a given while growing up. My parents encouraged me to sketch during train journeys and while visiting my grandmother. This was to make sure that I shut up and dint bother them during the travel/vacation as I hated long journeys and got bored quickly.
I would gaze at clouds passing by, villages and towns, and as the sun set during journeys. They would promptly turn into drawings. Maps and plans would be occasionally added. I kept at it until high school. In college, drawing became a chore and texting the beacon of new found freedom. Fast forward to 2018, I sketched at Angkor Wat at Sunrise. It taught me more than all art classes and museum visits combined about impressionism. I continued sketching during my Belur and Halebedu trip on a Handkerchief I bought at the railway station. I am not sure If I had show it on the blog before – so here is a partial version of it.
Travel Journal with lettering
For this reveal, I decided to use the travel journal that I took on my Europe trip as a base. I had made a few sketches live on location and a few others while travelling between countries on train. However, Since I only had a cotton rag book and a set of cheap tiny sketch pens + water colour mini pencils with me, my sketches did not look great. The paper was not conducive for double side work. Plus, I get performance anxiety if people look at what I am drawing. That left a few pages half done. I filled them up last week but the moment I wrote on them, it got spoiled. As, a consequence I added images/sheets on top of them which eventually made it worse. Here is whatever that could be salvaged from the lettering experiment.
Lettering lettering experiment
Not wanting to give up, I tried to teach myself lettering using a few brush pens and colored pens that I have. While experts will disagree, I think that it is decent.
The next spread is based on a catalogue of an exhibition called “Time is out of joint” that happened at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. I colour washed and sealed with Mod podge sparkle and scribbled Rome Museo on the edge. At this point I was simply experimenting without an outcome in mind.
At this point, the journal had become more of a practice notebook than a travel journal. I dug around to find paper with interesting lettering. I found an old English to Tamil dictionary that was a prize I got in 10th standard for a fancy dress competition. This looked so good textured and distressed, until I went too far and added colour. I guess I don’t know when to stop.
One was a sheet of crossword in a weekly Tamil magazine filled up by my Dad. His writing is worse than mine. I stuck the sheet, gessoed edges and colour washed the spread. Then I wrote a couplet from Thirrukural on the other side. This is a favourite of my Dad and important for managers and administrators. Translated it means that one incharge must identify the right person for the job and handover that task to them if they want it to be carried out successfully.
As I tried to seal the writing, the ink sort of evaporated leaving thin lines. So I traced the lettering on photoshop using a simple brush tool.
In the last one, I decided not to write after too many failed attempts. This is a collage of magazine sheets in Italian and an image from a exhibition at the Palace of Versailles – with French words. I gesso-ed the images and water washed them for a nostalgic effect.
What did I learn from my lettering Experiment
This experiment only reinforced what I already knew – that I can draw better than I can write. This presupposition acts as a mental block whenever I try. I have to work this out before I attempt writing on other prepared pages. I also do not know how to keep the gesso-ed/textured/sealed pages from sticking to each other. any advice would be appreciated as I have lost a few pages due to this.
Leave a Reply