more calligraphic exploration

Decide who you are,

decide what you want to do,

and then do it

because it is surely possible

~Doyald Young

calligraphic doodles

In one of my classes this week, I had the honor of participating in a workshop with calligrapher/designer Karen Charatan. I'm not much of a designer, so this kind of stuff isn't exactly the most riveting thing in the world to me, but seeing her make O's with perfectly shaped centers and B's with precisely the right proportions was still pretty impressive.

Here is one of the pages of lettering I came up with. I responded to the texture of overlapping words, and the repetition of trying to find the perfect shape for a letter. I'll definitely be experimenting more with calligraphy now that I got a feel for it.

land of buddha font revival

Inspired by this original storefront, I studied the existing letters and imagined what other letters might look like in an advertisement for the store.

I decided the best way to achieve the style would be to use a brush and ink. The brush gave my letters the energy they needed, but much work needed to be done in Photoshop to clean them up.