tami rondeau

tami rondeau, my penpal with every vowel in her name a-e-i-o-u sent this card one year as part of our guild's holiday card exchange. she did the lettering and somehow had it reproduced. but all that white, is hand colored with a white pencil. very cool. another idea that is in my *must-steal* pile. i love that the red star is on the envelope and the card is just a simple column of words, with space along the side. it is always risky to stick my neck out and declare some designs as better than others...but this is clearly a superior design.

i can say things like that because in a few weeks i will post the ugliest thing i ever lettered. it was recently discovered in a box of my mother's keepsakes. my eyeballs almost melted when they saw it. after i blinked and resumed breathing, my mom asked.....are you going to keep it? she assumed that since it was so wretched, i would throw it away. oh, no...i said....i have an obligation to share this atrocity with my students. they need to know that we all start out with stuff that is pretty nasty. actually, there were some mid-range things that i did throw away. it's funny...one can admit to the really ugly early works, but the midrange stuff is more offensive. i wonder why that is?

by the way, i hope rose ann is reading the blog daily. i just met her at our monthly lettering club. she is deciding which style to work on first. she is drawn to frank lloyd wright's penmanship. this example has some elements of the FLW exemplar that we are using. rose ann was not happy with the precision of her upright strokes. so, notice the way tami tilts the letters back and forth and connects them. this is a way to make letters that do not require precise verticality. however, you still need to make each stroke without wavers or curves.