January Meeting Program / February Meeting Program

January Meeting Programme - Square Round Lettering

Our own Carolynn Dallaire presented a lettering style from Lynn Slevinsky’s Marker Lettering, Vol. I. The Square Round Alphabet is useful for cards requiring formal or masculine pieces. It can also be used in a variety of ways such as light or dark pieces or for unusual backgrounds that can be enhanced by colouring the letters. A variety of tools can also be used such as Pigma pens, pointed pens, markers or pencil crayons. Carolynn provided a guide sheet made up of rows of squares separated vertically and horizontally by 1/8-inch spaces. She demonstrated the formation of each letter using the guide paper underneath her work. Carolynn drew each letter in a slow methodical way making it easy to follow the steps. After making the “I” she moved her paper over the guide to maintain the proper spacing. This was also done with the “W” and “M” as they are drawn larger than the square on the guide sheet. The “S” is on a slant so Carolynn likes to bring it into the next square.

The second part of Carolynn's presentation was to write a pangram. She placed a dot after each word and moved the guideline to accommodate the placement of words and letters.

Finally, we added weight to the strokes. Each letter was drawn and then the corners and ends of the lines were darkened giving weight to the letters. The last thing we did was to write our name. It became part of an address for an envelope using other hands as well. The response to Carolynn's program was very positive. “I like learning new letters” and “This was the best program” were some of the comments afterwards. Thank you Carolynn for a most enjoyable session. - Linda Yaychuk

February Meeting Programme - The Empty Space

Member Diana Carwithen gave a demonstration based on her on-line class “The Empty Space”, facilitated by Marina Soria. We were initially issued with two exemplars of Ms. Soria’s work as a precursor to the demonstration. The theory behind the work is that there is beauty in the empty spaces around calligraphic letters. The work can be performed with any kind of calligraphic hand, and the exemplars (by both Diana and Ms. Soria) showed ways that the space between letters can be utilized to create interesting designs. In the demonstration a small quote had been used, and photocopied as a primary exemplar. Diana explained the technique. Using a light box and a primary copy, other papers were placed on top, one at a time. The first copy had the spaces around the letters coloured in, leaving the letters white. Subsequent copies were made as follows: by omitting the centre letters, but colouring in the border; colouring around the centre letters, but omitting the border; omitting a third of the letters either horizontally or vertically and colouring around the remaining letters; eliminating some letters and colouring around the rest, or leaving white space between the lines. The spaces can then be filled in using marker pen, coloured pencils or watercolour paints. Diana displayed samples of work from her fellow students, as well as her own work. The results of this demonstration showed the many intriguing designs that can be achieved using this technique. - Margaret Kells

Diana Carwithen

Marina Soria