Two days in, and I’m good to go with my commitments!  I’ve journaled in my Techo 2 days in a row, and I’ve worked on my handlettering every day for a big fat week!

Here’s where I was, doodling with my Sharpie at my desk, waiting for the work bell to ring:

And, then I practiced.  I wrote words repeatedly:

I did drills:

I dabbled with some watercolor:

And, I tinkered with the Instagram challenge, #literaryletteringchallenges.  I love quotes.  When I was in high school, I kept a book of quotes – it was kind of  a smashbook of quotes.  Some were neatly printed in block print, some were typed, some were in my friend’s crazy handwriting, as she would often borrow the book, add to it.  I think she must have ended up with it, or else I’d have it.  I can’t believe I would have thrown it away.  The literary lettering challenge is a bit above my skill level – it’s a lot of work to slowly draw all of those letters.  Writers are never brief, are they?  Although, I’ve recently become intrigued with something called Flash Fiction, micro short stories, tiny little nuggets of character, language and strangely, space in minutia.  What I mean is brevity can be quite expansive.

Anyway, here’s my first challenge – Emily Dickinson’s Hope is a Thing with Feathers –

I penciled this first, and finished it up with a Tombow Fudensuke hard brush tip pen.  Unlike the large Tombow brush pen we all know from our local art stores, the fudensuke is a fine point, that is really sensitive to the light upstroke, hard downstroke.  The above was just made with up and down motion, not the more familiar faux calligraphy, where you kind of color in the down strokes.  I love this new pen.  I’m not the neatest colorer – and I really appreciate being able to make that downstroke with one motion, much neater for me.

The next day was Paul Coehlo.  I decided to use my dip pen for this one, and I made the mistake of using my sumo ink on my low quality watercolor paper –

Eh, you live and you learn.  All was not lost.  I just put a piece of vellum over top, and traced my pencil sketch.

I can definitely see the progress I’ve made in just one week. A lot of practice, and I’ve really been slurping up Skillshare, with my 99 cents for three months. There are a number of handlettering/calligraphy classes to choose from, and while they’re pretty basic, I’ve had plenty of a ha moments. I’m definitely getting my buck’s worth.  I’m definitely having problems with consistency – in attempting to bounce my letters, I’m not always using the same letter form each time.  And my loops aren’t quite the same size.  But, I’m working on it, and will continue to do so – because I’m committed!

Hope everyone’s New Year is off to a good start.  The Rose Bowl wasn’t so good last night, but it’s just a game, gotta keep things in perspective.  Right.