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 This, my first workshop, was held at the San Diego National Bank in Rancho Bernardo. The room was light and airy and had just-right air conditioning. To begin, all of us set up our tools as DeAnn Singh spoke about the goals of the class. In the back of the room were grapes and coffee cakes to munch on. There was excitement and anticipation in the air.
DeAnn had us “warm-up” by getting out our water color pencils and do color charts. The really fun part of this exercise was that we were able to try out fellow students brands of watercolor pencils to see if there was a brand with colors more vibrant or more to our liking in blend-ability. We also did samples of our graphite watercolor pencils and even blended those with our regular watercolor pencils to create beautiful muted colors. DeAnn then walked us through different application techniques with our watercolor pencils that the manufacturers had recommended. It was great to get a feel for what our watercolor pencils could do and to meet our fellow students while trading pencils.
The next project we did was to utilize masking fluid with a small brush to “draw” the designs or subject matter of our choosing on assorted types of papers. The designs were kind of like stained glass lead, and we filled in the spaces of the design using our watercolor pencils or watercolors to get different effects. After the watercolors were dry, we used a rubber cement eraser to reveal the finished design. Some of the students used an iridescent paint. DeAnn said that when our designs were put into our black-edged mat frames, the designs would all look like little “jewels”.
DeAnn then introduced Roman capitals. We drew the Roman capitals based on what “family” they were in: average width, ¾ width, round width, narrow width, etc. DeAnn had us pull out a quarter, and it was the perfect size to trace for the O and Q! Making a perfectly round Roman Capital takes lots of diligence, concentration and practice. It separated out the beginning calligraphers like me from the more experienced calligraphers immediately!
The next lesson was about Optical Spacing of Roman Capitals. The goal of correct spacing in calligraphy letters is to have all the spaces between your letters (of assorted sizes) be the same “gray” if you color in the spaces between your letters. We did exercises utilizing words like: MINIMUM, LAVISH, MAXIMUM and GLOOM. We wrote the words one above the other using the correct spacing and colored in the spaces with watercolors to embellish the words.
One of the other projects we did was drawing curvaceous lines and writing between the lines. DeAnn also demonstrated painting Hibiscus flowers and doing C’s and backward C on alternating lines, making an image that sort of looked like weaving.
The final project we did was leaf and mono printing using Speedball inks and brayers. Fall ink colors used on a large fern leaf was printed on black paper, green and gold ink used on tiny ferns on white watercolor paper, and green-inked heavenly bamboo leaves in an art journal were just a few of the stunning designs I admired.
It was very inspiring to walk around the room and see all the lettering and the assortment of embellishments used on various papers. I loved the embellished papyrus paper. At the end of the second day some student’s were inserting their different projects into the mats, and we were all oohing and ahhing. DeAnn took photos of all of our work, briefly analyzed our own natural handwriting, and made suggestions about how we could create our own customized alphabets.
Yvonne coordinated the flow of the workshop to keep us on track with time so we wouldn’t miss anything, and all the students helped each other whenever needed. It was a lovely experience for my very first workshop and I can’t wait for the others I have signed up for!
By Nancy Lee
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