Cape Town Calligraphy

Have just returned from a wonderful week of teaching and sharing in Cape Town.

Classes from the Non-verbal Impact of Letterform, In the Art of seeing the Invisible and Thinking out of the Box were the challenge.

All students were encouraged to participate fully and with as much enthusiasm as possible.

Not only were we able to share teaching but had a wonderful day in the city itself. Cape Town was hot and the mountain was clear.

The evenings cooled down - although teaching in the heat - and keeping everyone awake was a challenge, we all shared and enjoyed a great time.

Saturday workshop

Presented a workshop in Pretoria on Saturday. A creative afternoon of photographs and calligraphy was enjoyed by all twenty one participants.

I chose some of David's photographs and with some discussion about layout and design, we completed beautiful images.

We used gouache, tracing paper and fine nibs.

A great way to enjoy a Saturday afternoon.

New Classes 2010

Thursday is the start of the Penfriends Studio Classes 2010.

Tables turned, seats moved, equipment polished - all ready for the new year. Oh and I forgot - new notes and music too!

Creativity is very much part of 2010. Colour. Calligraphy. Creativity. The three C's of the classes.

Apart from the 3 C's, we have a great friendship as a group. So here we go to a great new year.

Back Home and Writing

What a place Argentina is! Exciting and fun. Beautiful and surprising. Antarctica is of course another tale altogether. Remarkable is all I can say at the moment.

I have updated my notes for 2010 and hope that we will have a creative and colourful year. The studio has been cleaned and re-set out and I hope the change will make everyone aware that change is good!

I will be attending workshops in Cape Town and Johannesburg and will also be presenting a workshop in Pretoria in February. I find all this very stimulating as presenting new ideas and expanding creative thought is always a challenge.

Look here for new creative ideas. I'll be adding them from time to time - perhaps even monthly.

A Review

2009, in spite of being a great travel year, provided everyone time for times of practice as well as plenty of time to complete various projects.

From the beginning of the year we explored various hands starting with Foundational with Sheila Waters as our mentor - via book not in person sadly! Her exquisite understanding of the form is inspirational.

We then moved onto Italic which was the main focus for the class in the second half of the year. Together with those calligraphic hands we continued the quest for creativity and the group certainly managed to forge ahead making small hand made books, decorated letters and simple letter weight designs.

We look forward to the break and reconvening in February 2010.

off on Another Adventure!

It's interesting when students don't arrive for a class, or arrive at the wrong time, or simply don't listen and arrive when they shouldn't. It is never their fault and always yours - but of course they become angry, irritated and quite frankly I can no longer take responsibility for someone else's error!

Fortunately this doesn't happen too often and when it does, I simply counter it with humour and of course a tongue in cheek.

I look forward to another adventure - where people are different, situations are interesting and there is a whole new aspect to calligraphy!

Back home for a few weeks.

Trying to keep classes running and stimulating on a stop-start basis is really challenging. However the group was left with the brief to complete a 'creative book' using various calligraphic fonts, Canson papers and collage.

This is always exciting as no-one book is ever the same and creative journalling offers wide scope of materials, pens and colours.

I like to look at the colours presented in nature - the plains of the Mara suggest lime to khaki green, the ocean in Zanzibar is turquoise and azure dotted with the white sand and cream shells.

Nature shows its own canvas entirely.