End of year, end of composition.
I’m done with the fragment of “L’Été” by Camus.
Partly in NEULAND, partly in Gothic, both scripts being inspired by Rudolf Koch.
Watercolou, iron gall ink and gouache on kraft paper.
And I take this opportunity to wish you a very good New Year’s Eve & an excellent year 2020.
I found, at the bottom of my medicine cabinet, an old (over 30 years old) bottle of aqueous eosin. It’s a bit too transparent for my taste to be used as is, but here’s an example of the (amazing) result when you drop a bit of eosin in iron gall ink still wet.
I’m fascinated by the fluorescent green, it’s quite unexpected.
At least, that’s what my wife claims (her background as a framer probably had something to do with it). To please her, I wrote this sentence on a kraft strip stuck on the door of her workshop.
And since it made me want to write in NEULAND (tampering with it a bit, I admit), I started the calligraphy, on kraft, of a fragment from L’été by Camus.
On the weekend of 18 & 19 April 2020, I will teach a workshop at the Welkenraedt Cultural Centre. It will be devoted to the writing and part of the decoration of the second Bible of Charles the Bald.
I worked on this manuscript more than 10 years ago and, in preparation for the workshop, I am getting back to it and trying some variations (especially of hues) based on a text by Seneca.
Decorated capital letters and original text with walnut stain, French translation into a later writing in iron gall ink.
Tired of filigrees and having a dictionary at hand, I had fun (with my wife) rewriting proverbs, locutions and other maxims.
Better to be alone than badly accompanied
turns into
Better to be alone than unaccompanied
The clothes don’t make the man
turns into
the magpie doesn’t make the sparrow
the more the merrier
turns into
the more we stand, the more we shout
many are called, few are elected
turns into
many are to be peeled, few are hairy
(seems to be a kiwi proverb)
I really like the color resulting from the use of a Payne’s grey in watercolor on a pink dictionary page background.
Tired of only doing small letters, I asked the help of my friend Pascal Aussi to create a primer.
So he selected words that appeared in his songs, and I’ m in charge of putting them on the page.
Today, the first letter with the word “Arbre” (Tree).
As usual, the initial is about 2 cm high.
Small letters are fun for a few years but, after a while, you want to evolve.
So I started a alphabet book using the verses from the poem Hyperion by John Keats.
You are going to tell me that an alphabet book begins with an A and you will be right, but the poem begins with a D, which is why that is what you see here.
I am not very satisfied and it is therefore a draft, in compensation, I show you two small initials very simple but nevertheless pretty.
