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Mike Whittington
A dozen or so of our members enjoyed a relaxing and rewarding day with Lynn
Lefler, from the Toronto Guild, in late October. Lynn taught a number of techniques
to add a little lift to our calligraphic endeavors.
Load a pointed brush with weak gouache or transparent water colour and place it flat on the paper, so that both point and ferrule are in contact with the paper.
Role the ferrule about half a turn to the left, keeping the point in the same place. Lift the brush and move it to the left, clear of where the first stroke finished.
Place it on the paper flat with the point coincident with the point of the previous mark. This time roll the ferrule to the right to overlap the previous mark.
This makes a very convincing rose bud finish it off with a stem and leaves.
The next technique works well with a cheap brush, don't use good ones.
Charge the brush with weak gouache or water colour and place flat on the paper. Rotate the ferrule about 90 degrees, but keep it more or less in the same place; the tip will translate through about 90 degrees.
Repeat this three times, each time rotating the starting point to coincide with the end point. This gives four petals. By varying the amount of rotation one can obtain three, four or five petaled flowers.
Add a little colour to the centre and a few do to represent pollen. Outline the 'flower' petals to add effect.
Next we were asked to write out three names and Lynne demonstrated some simple, but very effective, ways of decorating these names, using flowers, leaves & tendrils attached to stalks woven through the names.
Other techniques learned included decorating monoline text, suitable for envelopes. Lynn entitles this as controlled scribble.
After lunch it was back to school days with potato cuts and sponge prints. It's amazing how, with a little imagination, these everyday objects can produce quite effective decorations for cards, envelopes and greetings cards. Dip the cut potato or sponge into gouache and proceed to decorate. Try different sponges for different surface textures.
Next came embossing and debossing. Lynn taught us a very simple and very effective way of doing both, neither needing the assistance of a light table. We practiced using letters with detached centres, such as 'A' & 'B'.
First draw your design on a piece of thick card, then cut it out using a sharp Exacto knife. Keep the pieces.
Next tape a piece of paper to the back of the card and place the cut out letter back into the card, leaving the cutout centres free. Then apply a small amount of stick glue to the cutouts and then place them back into the card, ensuring they stick to the backing paper. Remove the letter, leaving the letter centres in place.
Next cover the card with a piece of tracing paper and stick it with tape along the top edge to form a hinge.
Trace the outline of the letter onto the tracing paper, this will act as a guide when embossing. Next take the card you wish to emboss and place it over the cutout letter card but under the tracing paper. Using your embossing tool follow the shape of the letter as indicated by the tracing overlay. Continue until you have run the embossing tool over the entire letter, pressing the card into the backing.
To deboss, i.e, have raised lettering, do the same as above but reverse every thing and work from the back instead of the front.
The last piece of major work was to complete two projects using the techniques learned earlier in the day. A number of examples may be seen here.
As one final act of encouragement Lynn introduced us to writing on leaves. This can be done with great effect using gel pens. Dry your leaves in the pages of old telephone books. One suggestion was to glue a leaf to a piece of card stock and start to write on it and let the text follow onto the card.
Thanks Lynn for a busy and rewarding day.
