Faut être malin

It was on hearing this serinerant slogan on the radio for the umpteenth time that I decided on my calligraphic occupation of confinement.
Most of my colleagues are involved in “challenges” and my gregarious instinct being what it is (.i.e non-existent), I had to find my own way.
So I compose from advertising slogans, one maxim a day.
Here is my production for the moment.
You’ll tell me that it’s nonsense and I’ll tell you that you’re absolutely right 🙂

Insurrection is a duty

This is, in essence, what article 35 of one of the first versions of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen said in case of government bankruptcy (i.e. when the government violates the rights of the people).
I find that this is a situation that is ocurring more and more often, and I deplore, first of all, that this happens, and secondly, that this article was not retained in later versions and written into our constitution.
In short, I am not going to get into political considerations, here is my calligraphic interpretation of this article.

I calligraphed the whole thing with a piece of bevel-cut wood (two edges, one at each end), using Payne grey in watercolour and cadmium red as a pigment with gum arabic. The signature was made with iron gall ink.

And I had to abbreviate by suspension the word “indispensable” twice (ie I removed the N’s), with a titulus in order to keep the layout. For the same reasons, I used an ampersand from the Tironian notes in the 5th and 7th lines.

CQFD

Before returning to more serious things (or not), a small series of abbreviations with my unavoidable filigrees.

What had to be demonstrated (French version of “quod erat demonstratum”)

Too much information

I thought there were too many filigrees (too much information!) so I made a more sober version.

and, because there’ll be more, et cetera.

Beati

This project will have been going on for almost three years, but it is finally over.

It is therefore about the beatitudes in the version of Saint Luke and according to the text of the vulgate.
The cadel B was made on metal and the embossing on a rag paper whose provenance I have totally forgotten.

I’m rather happy with the result, especially with my abbreviations, ligatures and Tironian notes in the NEULAND style, but even without mentioning these details, the overall view is rather nice, isn’t it?

Pangram curtain

The winter sun is sometimes annoying when I work in my workshop, so my wife made me a curtain.
But I can’t leave a fabric of this surface untouched! I have to scribble on it!
And as I didn’t know which text to use, I fell back on pangrams in several languages.
The advantage is that it will give my trainees ideas when they take calligraphy classes in the workshop and don’t know what to write.
I’m only at the beginning, I started with a pangram in English and in NEULAND.

I continued with a German version in Gothic fraktur…

the next one will be a French version, soon…

The secret I’m looking for…

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.

Kraft is life

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.