Welsh Anthem

When I was a member of our local W.I. (for about 10 years), I discovered a competitive streak which I didn’t realise I had!

Every year there is an agricultural show which encompasses two neighbouring counties, Flintshire and Denbighshire, and my local village had not been entering much. When I found out about this (and was cajoled onto the committee!) I put a lot of pressure onto our members to join in and make stuff for these shows. We did quite well, on the whole, for such a small membership.

I had been going to calligraphy classes for a couple of years, evening class once a week, and so tried my hand at that part of the competition (as well as lots of other crafty/baking/sewing/embroidering entries) – calligraphy being the only ‘arty’ thing I could even attempt. Put a paint brush in my hand and, unless it’s a large wall, I go completely to pieces – I really cannot draw or paint but I am not bad with a dip pen and some ink or gouache.

The photo above shows the Welsh National Anthem written in uncial font which is quite ‘celtic’ looking. I like to write on a curve as it’s easier to hide the odd mistake such as letters not being exactly the perfect heights etc..!

The paper I wrote on is pale green with an image of a tree which I decided was quite apt due to the W.I. logo being a tree. I used black engrossing ink for the wording and then printed out a few copies of the Welsh Dragon which I painted (yes, OK, I know I said I can’t paint but I can colour in the lines!) and then decoupaged below the verse.

The Celtic-knot border around the mat-board was drawn in pencil first and then inked over with a wide dip pen and the same black ink – that really did make me cross-eyed!

I won first prize

Welsh words

Decoupaged Dragon

The Night Will Never Stay

Night

The black paper I used for this was ‘splattered’ through a circular mask with a silver metallic pen and my ‘blitzer’ – this is a bulb-like contraption with a place to attach a marker pen, with which you blow the ink from the tip onto whatever medium you want.

Closer view

I stencilled silver stars around the ‘moon’ and penned the words with a yellow gouache which was watered down and applied to a dip pen with a brush. This is an italic script with quite a fine nib and you may notice that it’s written on curvy lines, again.

I won first prize

A Nursery Rhyme

Magpie

‘Magpie’ was written again in an italic script with a slightly fatter nib than the last piece. I used watercolour paints on my dip pen this time and watercolour paper to get the fading appearance. The numbers were coloured-in with well-watered-watercolours and I added the odd little flourish here and there (using the pen with its natural angled nib) to take away the starkness of the background. You can’t really see from the photos but, for example, the words for ’5′ read ’5 for silver’ and the silver was written in silver ink.

I won first prize

1 thru 7

1 thru 6

5 thru 7

An Old Adage

There was a lot of research to be done to find an adage which I liked and which I thought would translate to a piece of calligraphy nicely.

The purple mat gives quite a regal feel to the piece when teamed with the gold paint of the illuminated letters. Gold gouache for them, green gouache for the uncial lettering and then simple flowers painted (no, I still can’t paint!) over the gold base. There are little tiny dots done with a very fine nib all around the large letters, and the lettering this time used a much broader nib.

Glitters

Closer view

I can’t say if I find it easier to do fine or broad lettering – when applying paint to the nib with a brush it’s very hit-and-miss. You can run out of ‘ink’ quickly and at an inopportune moment when doing large letters and can very easily overload the reservoir of a fine nib and make it too thick to flow nicely etc…

I won first prize

Jerusalem

This time we were asked to pen the first verse of the W.I. Anthem which is the wonderful ‘Jerusalem’. I used watercolour paper onto which I (painted) hills and mountains green. The lettering is gouache again with a medium-nibbed dip pen and Carolingan font. This is a lovely, spreading font and quite decorative – I love the letter ‘d’ – which seems to be based on uncial.

I actually wrote in straight lines for once.

I won first prize

Jerusalem

I bet you're singing!

Better angle?

A Proverb

The proverb

Oh my, I’m beginning to think I should go back to the beginning and remove what I said about not being able to paint! It’s true really and yet I seem to have ‘painted’ on most of these pieces of artwork. Believe me, it doesn’t come easy and it’s mostly copied……

This is quite a nice simple proverb and I colour washed a piece of watercolour paper in a golden-yellow before writing it in a simple italic with a few flourishes on some of the letters.

The words are framed with a thick red line and the painted flowers which overlap it here and there and also spill out onto the matboard. I rarely put these behind glass, but then they’re not even out on display anywhere yet so they don’t need protecting. I do plan to hang them in the calligraphy area of my craft room ….. one day!

I won first prize

Top corner

Closer

Bottom images

A Celebration Poem

Festival

I spent so long trying to find a poem for this theme. I failed in the attempt and so resorted to choosing a celebratory word – FESTIVAL – and finding words which meant celebration and which began with each letter of the main word, I suppose you’d call them acronyms. I tried to find festivals from all over the world to put here, some were a little obscure and I guess I was clutching at straws but it worked in the end. The paper is parchment and the initial capitals are painted with a copper medium and outlined in black.

Again, I used gouache to write with and double-matted the whole thing – looking at it now I think I should have decorated the cream mount board as it’s rather stark.

What does it mean?……

‘F’: Flowers on Jersey; Fantasy Feelings; Foreign funeral feasts.

‘E’: Easter excitement; Evil spriits; Enlisting supernatural aid.

‘S’: Sabbath; Saturnalia; Shabuoth or Pentecost – harvest of the wheat crop.

‘T’: Thanksgiving; Transfiguration; Tet – celebrating Indochinese lunar New Year.

‘I’: Independence day; Invocation; the Iliad – mythical King and harvest festival.

‘V’: Vernal equinox; Vikings and Jorvik; festivals for the Virgin Mary.

‘A’: Abundance at harvest time; wassailing of the Apple trees.

‘L’: Licentious ancient festivals; Lent

….all this and more.

Wow, reading this back after all this time I really was stuggling wasn’t I?! Never mind…..I won first prize

Close up

The poem

There wasn’t always a calligraphy entry in the schedule, some years they did without and put other skills in like painting on china, silk painting etc….. but, as I was on the committee, I did insist now and again that they put it in the schedule. Unfortunately, they got really sick of me winning all the time and used to try not to have calligraphy in the show at all, I thought that was quite mean-spirited of them

Calligraphy doesn’t flow easily from my hands I’m afraid, it takes me weeks of practising before I’m ready to start on the real thing and lots and lots of screwed-up trial samples. I am left-handed and therefore really struggle with some scripts and yet find others quite easy – the main difficulty is smudging. Left-handers have to follow their pen across a page and can therefore smudge the work very easily, right-handers drag the pen behind them and so don’t have that issue. It’s true of all handwriting, not just this decorative type, and so something we all have to learn to deal with from an early age. There are special nibs available, angled the opposite way to the normal ones, to make it easier and, if you’re thinking of taking up this wonderful hobby, then I heartily recommend investing in the correct tools. Personally, I can’t use a calligraphy felt pen to save my life! Well, I can do rough stuff but have never managed to achieve a classy-looking piece using one. I do find that the chunkier the marker, with a large chisel tip, the easier it is.

I used to volunteer at the infant/junior school which my boys attended and Friday was craft day – we did all sorts of different things and I did show them how to do calligraphy at one stage. We used large felt-pens for this – obviously they couldn’t handle dip pens – and they all did pretty well and loved it when I wrote their names in large fancy letters for them to take home with them. I also had to give a ‘talk’ to a class full of 10-year-olds all about calligraphy once, what a nerve-racking experience that was! Don’t think I was cut out to be a teacher but I loved doing the volunteer crafty stuff with them.

Other Pieces

At the class I attended we tried our hand at all sorts of different techniques, not just penmanship. The photos below show a letter A drawn on A4 black card with each section patterned differently and with a couple of pieces cut away completely and then lined with yellow film.

A

Closer view

Can you see the film?

Pessimist

A Pessimist

I love the sentiment behind this verse, just a random piece which has sat in a folder for many years – written with a dip pen and black ink in an italic hand.

Easter Bonnet

Easter bonnet

The Easter bonnet is also just a project from class, guess I had been painting again!

Grandad Tommy

This last item was entered in the W.I. competition but didn’t win!!! I wrote the words on tracing paper in yellows and greens and laid it over a photograph which my husband had taken of his grandad some years ago. He was a wonderful character, a coal miner all his life, and was a great joke-teller. The biggest problem I had was that he was a Yorkshire man and I was born in Lancashire – I had to have someone translate his jokes for me!

“I am the family face, flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion”  Thomas Hardy.

Grandad

Close up

Autumn

My very first entry for a competition didn’t actually make it to the show! I had learnt this calligraphy technique and we were doing a ‘season’ so I produced Autumn, shown here. I hadn’t realised at that time that we were not allowed to openly refer to our own institute name in the WI competition so I had to start again. This hangs on my wall now and I do like it. The second entry I made is shown below, Ode to Autumn. When I find the photos of the whole display I will post them, it was a very attractive grouping of all things in that colour range – and we won!

Many years ago I started to teach myself calligraphy. I watched a show on TV in California where a chap made it look sooooo easy if you just bought his pens and charts. Well, it isn’t! When I moved back here to Wales I came upon a bridal fayre at a hotel and spoke to the lady who was doing the wedding stationary. She gave me details of her tutor and he lives quite close to me so I started going there once a week for lessons. He is a fabulous artist but used to scare me whenever he asked me to pick up a paint brush to do a background – I do not ‘do’ paintbrushes!

I loved these classes and found I wasn’t bad at this art form, I have won several first places at our local agricultural show – WI section – though it always takes me a long time to produce a piece of work.  I had to give up my classes to be a Mum – they clashed with football training to which I had to drive my son so I decided I’d come back to it later.I never did make it back to class but I do still occasionally put pen to paper and love it. I have a drafting table which I can angle to suit and that does make it easier to write but have one big disadvantage – being left-handed! Most pen nibs are slanted for right-handers so I have to be aware of that and make sure I buy the correct ones for me. Also, working with wet ink means that my hand drags through the words I’ve just written and smudges if I’m not careful. I love a challenge though.

I don’t know if any of you use those packs of pre-folded card blanks? Well, one Christmas I bought gold and silver ones to use, the cards are lovely and the insides are white so there was no problem there. The envelopes though — I tried every pen in the house and it was like I was being a spy! Disappearing ink! So, that year, I resorted to a dip pen and engrossing ink which actually showed up on the envelopes – they were probably nicer than the card inside but took me hours!

It’s one of those things, if I had time to practise and keep on top of it then I know it would come easier. Pity we have to eat, wear clean clothes…….

Ode to Autumn is written on watercolour paper and made into a concertina book. The leaves are real, dipped in pearlescent paint and pressed onto the surface briefly.

Dust is a saying which makes me smile and which describes my philosophy perfectly!

Ode to Autumn

I hate dusting!