March to Patty, Lynne and Juliana - almost end of topic

 

I hardly ever produce envelopes that wow me - and I'm not crazy about these colors - but, I have a real fondness for them because I had to do 30 envelopes and I was really late - so I needed an idea that I could just crank out fast. I had a stack of these leftover envelopes from my daughter's holiday cards and I did not have a good stamp. I decided I would try to make it work with the flower stamps. I with the white had been whiter. I had all the names done and then really struggled with how to tie everything together. The most fun part was trying different borders for the stamp. Thanks again to Janet who is a frequent borderer so that the concept keeps popping up.

Patty's is my favorite which is unusual because the TTY in her name is often challenging. Lynne's name is perpetually challenging because of the NNE - and she doesn't fit in the short-first-long-last category - so I struggle with making the two names work together at the same size.

Juliana got the best border - but the J-loop with the z-loop inside is a little clunky. Patty's border is pretty good. Her name is sooooo loopy that the straight lines are nice visual relief. 

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How can you tell if your hodge-podge has finesse or is just a weird mess? 

That's a trick question. There is no definitive way to judge finesse. Bob Ross was convinced that the road to happiness was mastering the techniques that he had learned from that other guy. 

LINK to article about Robert Alexander

Those guys and all the people who learned the style are pretty happy with their skills. I'm happy for them. I wouldn't say this to them directly, but for me, the paintings are generic.  If you get good at that style, it's hard to see any sign of an individual artist. That's fine, too.

Calligraphy is quite similar. If I worked really hard to make my lettering exactly like Sheila Waters' I might be able to fool a few people. But, it would be really hard and doubt I could pull off something that would fool the other rock stars in calligraphy. 

For me, finesse comes from working hard to master a style as done by someone else and then after you can replicate that style, your own *hand* will start to appear. I'm pretty sure that's how it works when someone finds an old Rembrandt in an attic that's been hiding and needs to be authenticated. There are tons of little details that reveal whose hand made those strokes.

Tomorrow will be the last day on this topic.

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Yesterday I added this photo to illustrate writing that has too much space between the words. It's written by a left-handed, non-calligrapher. 

I'll put an extra post in below - with several examples of calligraphy with word spacing.