Art Journey Journey - Another Type - Illuminated Lettering

I am intrigued by the Illuminated Lettering of Western Europe.  It's a type of lettering that really interests me.  I would just be content if I could do the other writing that they do but to do the tiny paintings that are based around a letter and the decorative borders just blows my mind.  It was usually the first letter of a page that was enlarged and in colour, enhanced with gold and would include animals, plants and mythological creatures.

Illuminated Manuscripts were hand-made books produced in Western Europe between 500 - 1600 CE.  with monasteries as their earliest creators.  The use of gold and silver "lighting up" the page gave way to the name Illuminated Lettering/Manuscripts and the pages were made from animal skin, eg calf, sheep, goat.  The most popular type  of illuminated manuscript was the "Book of Hours" which was comprised of Christian Prayers to be said at certain times throughout the day.

Take this letter 'T' as an example.  The letter itself is fairly simple in shape but the intricate drawing within it and the beautiful natural forms that surround it and go down the side and across the base are so beautifully drawn.  I just imagine some ancient monk sat in a tiny bare room making this beautiful work.  If you look closely you can see there are also some very finely drawn brown lines down the left hand side.

Another beautiful example is this one which is rather more pictorial and I imagine tells a story.  Even some of the letters in the body of the page are illuminated.  I wonder if the figures are saints?

I don't want to swamp you with pictures of illuminated lettering but I have to include one of my favourites.  It's a cropped picture of "The Funeral of Raymond Diocrès".   Diocrès, who was a professor at the University of Paris, is known for a miracle that happened at his funeral where he returned to life briefly, in order to swear to the assembly that God had judged and condemned his soul.   I know it misses the illuminated lettering but the window is just so beautiful and the drawings superb.  

What magnificent artists they were all those years ago.

My page was first coloured a light to mid brown using Antique Linen and Vintage Photo applied with a cosmetic brush.  I then photocopied the letter "A", coloured it with my Promarkers and fussy cut it out.  Yes, I cut the whole thing out - I must have been crazy to start.  I then glued it in the centre of my page.  Why!  I think I was afraid of it getting torn if it was left lying around.

I had chosen a few pieces of illuminated text that I liked and made small copies of them for my page but placing them in different positions I settled on just two - a "b" and what could be mistaken for a "c" (not sure what it is really).  That made it "ABC" in my reckoning - artistic licence at large here.

After that I did not know what to do so I began searching through the books Lorraine had loaned me.  Most of the letters were too decorative for me to copy.  Yes I could trace them but that would not have been the right thing to do imo.  Plus they were so intricate it would have taken hours.  In the end I settled for the word "Illuminated" comprised of eleven letters simply drawn and so I photocopied them, coloured them in with my Promarkers again, and stuck them across the top of the page.  

I then photocopied some of the text from various pieces and tore them up into random shapes which I used to fill in the blank spaces left on the page.  And so it was finished.  I would have loved to have had the skill and time to do that writing myself with an italic nib on a pen - maybe it is something I can try later in a book solely for the purpose of trying out different scripts.

I hope this has shown another way to look at the theme I chose at Art Journal Journey which as you know by now is "Type".  This is another type of lettering and is also a mark/symbol made on a page.  I hope you can join in with my theme at Art Journal Journey with your own interpretation of 'type'.

Jeudi Journal - Naughty

Another Dylusion Journal challenge I do with Wendy.  This time I had to think how could I link it differently to my last one so that I could also link it to Art Journal Journey where I have chosen the theme 'Type'.  Again I chose to use 'fonts' as my link to 'type', and again it was a font I chose from my cake icing book.  I have never used this one before and judging by the size of the letters in the book  I needed a short quote.

I needed to draw some lines to try to get my letters more or less the same size, but to be exact you really need to use squared paper, not possible here so mine was just four lines for each word.  As I told you last week, I love looking at calligraphy and would love to be able to do it but I just do not have the patience to practice.  This was an easy alphabet to use but I needed to use a ruler for the straight uprights on the capital (uc) letters.  You will notice that the final word has had to be split into two - I wondered if that was possible so I checked some of the work by one of my favourite Dylusion artists, Miranda van den Bosch, and she does do just what I have done - which is why I went ahead with it,

A big mistake I made was doing the background with Pan Pastels (chalks).  Nice and quick, and I was in a hurry to get some backgrounds done at the time so just went ahead with them - not good when you need to rule lines for the lettering - the background gets erased when you come to get rid of your lines.   Doh!  I still am the 'original dizzy blonde' even though the blonde is turning grey.  Anyway, my story:

"Sarah and Sammy are brother and sister and that is about how far it goes - they are like chalk and cheese.  Their mum tears her hair out at times at some of the things Sammy gets up to, she is so thankful that Sarah is nothing like him and quite a good little helper around the house.

The weather has been unusually sunny of late and Sammy has been playing out with his cricket bat and ball.  Mum had told him not to play with that ball, which was quite hard, near the houses, but Sammy being Sammy did not listen.  Off he had gone and done everything he shouldn't when "CRASH" - yes, the inevitable happened, the ball went through the window. 

Sarah rushed outside and sure enough, there was a gaping hole in one of the panes of the window. 

"What have you done?" she asked,  "Mum told you not to play with that hard ball,  you were supposed to use the foam one.  You are going to be in so much trouble."

"I didn't do it on purpose" said Sammy, "I was just playing cricket on my own and I hit a six but the window got in the way."

"Oh" shouted Sarah, "You do my head in, do you ever use your brain, you are so stupid at times"

"Hell Yeah, I've been naughty" said Sammy with a silly grin on his face.  He knew full well that mum would not punish him too badly, maybe just send him to bed early.  That didn't worry Sammy, he could always play on his iPad if he was banished upstairs."

That's it for this week's Jeudi Journal page, see you over on Art Journal Journey to see what others have done.

WOYWW 636

 Well, here we are again,   Another week, another Wednesday, another WOYWW.  Pop over here to see what I am on about if you don't know.

Yesterday I was at my cousin's funeral - a sad day for me as I am now the oldest member of the family left standing.  Not that it was ever a big family but saying goodbye yesterday was particularly sad for me.  I'd lost the only contact I had with my childhood.  Last week we took ourselves off to Kirby Lonsdale, a place he used to visit with his wife on his way to see his sister in law, in Barrow.    She and I had been the two bridesmaids at his wedding.  Because it was somewhere we used to talk about, and he knew so much more about it than I did, I decided to go and place two roses, one from each of us, at Ruskin's View.

It was strange really because there was ivy, ever so tiny, growing around this corner post at the view where everyone sits and looks out.  Ideal, as I was able to place the roses down through the trailing vine.  It was as if it was meant to be.

Anyway, you've come here to see my desk and not me waffling on about my being sad etc.

Well, if you look back in my blog you will see I have been really busy doing as many Journal pages as I could for the theme I chose which was "Type".  In fact I meant to post one page on here but my head was not working and I posted it yesterday instead.  Still busy preparing more pages, I want to do them until the end of the month at short intervals.  

You can see my page open at a grungy background with some letters stencilled on - not a clue what I am doing with it, where I am going.  The two books you can see are about illuminated lettering that a friend loaned me for some ideas.  Then there's my small brush roll, I was painting something last night, and then my travelling kit which consists of a green folder full of Aall & Create stencils and a box underneath containing stamps, washi tape etc.  The rest on the wall you know about because it rarely changes and if i did have a change I would show you.

So that's it for this week, a bit late as my head did not work last night and I did not know it was Wednesday when I woke up.  See you over at WOYWW.

Art Journal Journey - Type

This is another of my inspiration pages for 'Type' over at Art Journal Journey and I must confess I was inspired by a tag my friend Lorraine sent to me.  She actually said I could use her tag on my page but rather than do that I used her page for inspiration - and her stencil for the background.  The stencil is Alphabet Spaghetti by Andy Skinner and I have no idea why I had never bought it as Andy has always been someone I have admired and looked up to.  Hence I have quite a few of his stamps and stencils - and now this one too as I just had to buy it.

I used Scattered Straw and Hickory Smoke through the stencil in parts all over my page in my large Dylusion Journal.  The typewriter top left is by Bipasha and the letters and numbers by Tracy - both from Aal & Create, as is the washi tape.

The bottom typewriter is a die-cut that Lorraine gifted me (along with lots of things not yet used).

I hope this inspires you to join in with my theme over at Art Journal Journey where you will get a warm welcome.

Art Journal Journey - Types of Cocktails

When I was in college learning to type I always enjoyed using different fonts and changing the sizes of lettering.  Display work was always a favourite thing for me to do and I took great delight in making the most of things like advertisements and menus.

Years later when I began teaching Commerce one of the Units I had to teach was Advertising and I just loved when it came around to that time of the year when I had to deal with that subject.  Powerpoint was a favourite program of mine and I enjoyed using it to do presentations but still enjoyed my typing on both a typewriter and a computer.  Later I found the ability to use Powerpoint a good tool for talking to parents at school about Options, Work Experience and Career Prospects which was part of my additional teaching post at school.

So when I chose 'Type' as my theme for Art Journal Journey I knew I had to include some display work.  Now not really being much of an alcoholic drinker, except the occasional gin and tonic, and I do mean occasional, I thought about looking at some cocktails.  So here is my page dealing with them:

The pink drink on the right was on a card, along with the word "cocktails" that a friend of mine sent to me.  I did like the way she had done the card so it always stood in my craft room, little did I know months ago that it would be useful in my Journal.  Now I have no fear of losing it and remembering the card that Heather sent to me.  The other images are from a set of stamps that another friend, Jayne, loaned to me for the purpose of this page.

I must confess the only cocktail I have had is a Margarita and that was when I was first introduced to Mexican Cuisine by my late friend in America.  I had heard of a Bellini, in fact I went into Harry's Bar where they were made famous in Venice, but only had a coffee early one morning.  

I had to look up the ingredients of all of these cocktails but enjoyed myself changing the fonts and using the 'centre' command.

I hope this has given you another idea of how you can do the theme of 'type' and enter into the challenge over on Art Journal Journey.  I'd love to see you there.

Art Journal Journey - Type

 This was the first journal page I did for my guest designer spot at Art Journal Journey and I was quite excited about it.  I just love those little figures by Janet Klein and Charlie Chaplin was a firm favourite from the minute I saw she had drawn him.  Today is also my partner's birthday, and as he is called Charles (but prefers to be known as Chas) it seemed appropriate that I used this one today.

Luckily I remembered I had a stencil with some figures of him in a film strip and so I decided to base it around that and use a typewriter diecut that I had had for several years.  Now I am going back a while - to 21st May 2013 in fact, when I decided to launch something/somebody called "Flat Susan".  

It all started with a friend's daughter in America asking if I would host "Flat Stanley" for a school project she was doing.  Following the many trips I took with Stanley I decided I would launch Flat Susan.  Lots of people on here got involved and Flat Susan (who was a shrink plastic doll in a matchbox) journeyed all over the place.  You can read about her on my old blog which marks the first of her journeys.

Now, you may wonder what on earth this has to do with Charlie Chaplin.  The answer is "nothing really". but the typewriter depicted on this page was a thank you note sent to me by Bella (Belinda Basson) who lived in South Africa at the time.  I didn't want to spoil it by tearing off the top page of the diecut card so I stuck the whole thing down.  Now I have a reminder of Bella every time I look at this page.  Bella now lives in Germany and makes the most wonderful art, being a designer for Stamperia as well, some of you may well know her.

To begin with I masked the top of my page off and painted the lower section with grey paint.  I then darkened the paint slightly and stencilled some stars from an Aall & Create stencil on the page.  Next I used the Chaplin stencil (cannot tell you what it is called or who it is by) with some black paint through it before adding my figure and piece of Tim Holtz films strip.

So there you have it.  My next page for the theme Type, this time with a typewriter again featuring strongly.  I love how Charlie Chaplin is perched on the platen there.  I hope this inspires you to join in with my theme over on Art Journal Journey.  See you there?

Jeudi Journal - The World

At first when I saw this quote I was being asked to use for my Jeudi Journal with Wendy I thought of that film where James Cagney died on a gas storage tank saying "Made it Ma.  Top of the world!"  Obviously I was not going to do anything like that as the quote I was to use was "One day I will rule the world, until then I'm going to bed" but do you see why my mind went to this film?

My page began life covered with Pan Pastels in a yellow ochre kind of colour with a lilac stencil over the top.  Very faint colour, I must add, to depict worn wallpaper.  I made a window from a piece of navy card, put a brown frame around it and added a clip art (free) image of the world and some metallic stars. I then cut some curtains from lilac cardstock and added my girl.

"Donna had been to see her Great Gran.  She loved visiting the old lady and looking through her various boxes of treasure.  The old jewellery was a favourite of Donnas as she was allowed to try some of the pieces on and dance around with the paste stones glinting in the light.  Gran had been quite a looker in her day and had some of the most incredible earrings that jangled around Donna's neck as she danced and twirled.

They had enjoyed a lovely Victoria Sandwich that Donna's mum had brought along and Great Gran had bought some crumpets for them to toast.  All this was whilst they listened to Harry Secombe singing "If I Ruled the World", one of Great Grans favourites.

"If I ruled the world, Every day would be the first day of Spring, Every heart would have a new song to sing, And we'd sing the joy every morning would bring".  The words were echoed in a voice that had once been true but now had a slight tremble to it and Donna was filled with love for the old lady.

Donna often joined in, now almost knowing the words to the whole song having listened to it so many times, singing along "My world would be a beautiful place, Where we would weave such wonderful dreams, My world would wear a smile on its face, Like the man in the moon has when the moon beams".

Turning to her Great Gran she said that one day, she would make sure the world was a lovely place to live in, where everyone was happy and loved everyone else, where there was no hatred or pain.  One day, when she was Queen.....

That night, when Donna went to bed, she stared out and imagined she saw the world outside her window, humming the song in her head.  "One day I will rule the world, until then I'm going to bed" she said, as she closed her curtains."

Because I wanted this to fit in with Art Journal Journey's theme of "Type" I decided I would try a different kind/type of lettering and so this rather dominates the page today.  I have often thought I would like to try my hand at calligraphy but I just don't have the patience these days to spend hours practising the strokes so I tend to use my cake icing book and bluff my way through some of the fonts there.  I think all my Jeudi Journals will feature a different type of lettering (or font) this month.  Next week, in my Jeudi Journal, you will notice a real difference.