Calligrifficulties

A week in and the carving is well on its way to becoming second nature. It is the calligraphy that remains woefully inadequate and will so for the next few years. I'm trying to bring it along after hours, laying out small projects on beach stones for more immediate gratification. But the letters I'm generating for the most part are not terribly gratifying. Of course I'm surrounded by every imaginable calligraphy manual published in the last 80 years. It's almost like there is so much potential encouragement shouting from the bookshelves that I can't hear myself think about which direction I want to go in and who will best help me get there. It's a nice problem to have, I grant, but so much work remains. The work is hard. Do the work. That's the mantra around here.

A few of the happier one-offs:





I was glad to get back to my transferred alphabet, which was designed by Nick as part of the WWII Memorial. No complaints about those letters. They were intended to be carved in granite, so are a bit more robust than the Shop's slate-oriented house Roman. Around here they use the term blunderbuss to denote a letter form with a lot of steak its bones. I'm making decent enough progress to be moving on to an alphabet with a bit more finesse once I'm done. If I can bust through letters T to Z tomorrow I should be ready by Wednesday. After that I imagine the alphabets will be up to me. A daunting prospect indeed.