The secret I'm looking for...

End of year, end of composition.
I'm done with the fragment of "L’Été" by Camus.
Partly in NEULAND, partly in Gothic, both scripts being inspired by Rudolf Koch.

Watercolou, iron gall ink and gouache on kraft paper.

And I take this opportunity to wish you a very good New Year's Eve & an excellent year 2020.

Eosin

I found, at the bottom of my medicine cabinet, an old (over 30 years old) bottle of aqueous eosin. It's a bit too transparent for my taste to be used as is, but here's an example of the (amazing) result when you drop a bit of eosin in iron gall ink still wet.

I'm fascinated by the fluorescent green, it's quite unexpected.

Kraft is life

At least, that's what my wife claims (her background as a framer probably had something to do with it). To please her, I wrote this sentence on a kraft strip stuck on the door of her workshop.

And since it made me want to write in NEULAND (tampering with it a bit, I admit), I started the calligraphy, on kraft, of a fragment from L'été by Camus.

Solitude and society

On the weekend of 18 & 19 April 2020, I will teach a workshop at the Welkenraedt Cultural Centre. It will be devoted to the writing and part of the decoration of the second Bible of Charles the Bald.
I worked on this manuscript more than 10 years ago and, in preparation for the workshop, I am getting back to it and trying some variations (especially of hues) based on a text by Seneca.

Decorated capital letters and original text with walnut stain, translation into a later writing in iron gall ink.

Colors

A for grey, J for blue, R for walnut and S for red: -)

and then a few more with only walnut and iron gall ink

More proverbs

we continue (despite the few positive returns), my wife and I to reinterpret the proverbs and maxims.
Here are two new ones, seasonal.

To show solidarity with the social movements of the moment.

And a revised proverb in a fruity version, which targets in particular the kiwis.

approximate proverbs

Tired of filigrees and having a dictionary at hand, I start (with my wife) rewriting proverbs, locutions and other maxims.

Better to be alone than badly accompanied
turns into
Better to be alone than unaccompanied

The clothes don't make the man
turns into
the magpie doesn't make the sparrow

I really like the color resulting from the use of a Payne's grey in watercolor on a pink dictionary page background.
There will be others, we are far from having finished reinterpreting the ancient maxims!

a bit of R

I'm moving slowly towards the end of the primer, I'm not going to show you all the letters here but still a few to keep you on your toes.

We will soon be able to start the publishing phase!

Fame !!

I am very happy, there is an article dedicated to my work is featured in the last issue of Bound & Lettered, an American magazine published by John Neal.
In addition to many illustrations & explanations of my work in general and in particular on filigrees, you will find there the pictures of the different steps of the letter E I was telling you about here and that I finished !

You can order the issue of the magazine from the following link: 17.1

Primer - the cover

Okay, it's the third post in a row on the blog about this primer but it's also been almost 3 weeks that I've been working on it without stopping.
And so here is the first somewhat finished version of what will be the cover.

Primer - next steps

I am slowly moving forward with the primer project I was talking about earlier.
I do the alphabet from each side, it's nicer than doing it in order.

Primer - the A

Tired of only doing small letters, I asked the help of my friend Pascal Aussi to create a primer.
So he selected words that appeared in his songs, and I' m in charge of putting them on the page.
Today, the first letter with the word "Arbre" (Tree).

As usual, the initial is about 2 cm high.

Initials

Again & again ...

Slate in progress

From time to time, it is necessary to free yourself from paper to work on other media.
So I take back my faithful butter knife and start the engraving of a small slate.
It's only the first step but I already love it.

More initials

I'm finishing to rebuild a complet set of initials, and I vary a little bit the colors...

Alphabet

Small letters are fun for a few years but, after a while, you want to evolve.
So I started a alphabet book using the verses from the poem Hyperion by John Keats.
You are going to tell me that an alphabet book begins with an A and you will be right, but the poem begins with a D, which is why that is what you see here.
I am not very satisfied and it is therefore a draft, in compensation, I show you two small initials very simple but nevertheless pretty.

Back to walnut stain

New initials, I leave blue for a while and return to walnut stain and iron gall ink.

Me fecit

Because I don't thank her enough for the excellent work she does to highlight my compositions with her frames, because she deserves to be fully associated with my work, I made this little stamp for my wife.

This is of course not enough to account for all the help she gives me (you can imagine that she is not only framing my works) but she will now at least be able to put her signature on the back of the frames.

Want some more ?

Because there are still some :-)

And I'm currently working on another letter, a bit larger (3cm high), with 2 colors & a bit of gold but you'll only see this "work in progress" version for the time being

More & More

That's no supposed to be the meaning of this monogram but, until the people concerned reveive it, that will be it.
So there is a little MM monogram

blue, grey & 2 M

In need of blue

and of little initials

It's sometimes difficult to find new shapes for letters but this time, I'm quite happy with the Q

Write !

A beautiful text by Colette on the act of writing from La Vagabonde.
It's only a fragment, she talks about it in different ways, but it's the one that caught my attention the most.
Who do I know, maybe I'll calligraphy the rest another day?

I was very influenced by Rudolf Koch in this composition, first with the title in NEULAND, then with the Gothic, inspired by his book of signs.

And, to contrast, I have chosen a less "violent" humanistic script for the second part of the text.

I's has been a long time

So here are a few little filigrees :-)

The bright day is done...

...and we are for the dark.

I don't know if it's the end of summer approaching, the various events that are not very good in my life and more generally in the world, but this quote has been imposed on me recently.

It is based on Shakespeare's play Antony & Cleopatra.

I covered a white watercolour paper with iron gall ink, which I then embossed. And part of the text has been engraved on zinc to have both brilliance and darkness.

The script used is an approximative copy of a gothic script by Rudolf Koch that I have to keep working on to really make it my own.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

Mirror mirror tell me, I am the most beautiful...

Otherwise I'll break you once more in tiny bits.

Inspired by kintsukuroi but not having the necessary amount of gold on hand, my wife repaired an old broken mirror with kraft that I then decorated with this little warning: -D

Embossing

Work in progress, preparation of a stencil for a Shakespeare quotation.

still have to glue the counterforms back into the letters and find the right paper for the embossing, almost finished in fact ;-)

Exhibition

Today is a great day, it is the day when I will set up my exhibition at the Aventurine Gallery in Le Conquet.

It will remain in place until October 1st but that is no reason to wait until the last minute ;-)

The gallery is open every day (except Monday), I will be present in the afternoons during the weekends.

Circle

My wife, who is (among other talents) an excellent framer, offered me a small round frame in mahogany tones and told me to find something to put in it.
Challenge taken up (after several failures). And I chose, you'll never guess,... filigrees!

I used two very different dilutions of the walnut stain to get a little more variety. And, if you ask yourself the question, the circle is 7.5cm in diameter.