One of side effects of covid season has been having the time to take on projects I might have had to turn down in past years. This piece was for a lovely couple who wanted to recreate a gift they received on the occasion of their wedding to give to their daughter on the occasion of her wedding. We tweaked the crest a bit (swipe to see a side-by-side with the original). Aside from that they wanted to reproduce the existing document as closely as possible, so I matched the size, script and line spacing as closely as I could. Mimicking another calligrapher’s italic was an interesting (and fun) challenge. I think the hardest part was having to totally break away from the pointed pen muscle memory that I can usually let come through a bit when I’m just doing my own basic italic. I think one of my goals is to get really comfortable with broad edge nibs again, and totally separate out the different types of movement in my head/hand. Doing the bit of painting for the crest was also a really nice flashback. It felt good to have a brush in my hand again 😊
I used gouache for everything except the line work in the crest, which was done with platinum carbon black ink using a 3776 pen with a uef nib (huge thanks to Gordon (@pen.swordsman) for the uef, it’s perfect for things like this where I don’t want any line variation 🙏
