Just before I started on my Celtic lettering exercise I had the idea of trying out tea and coffee stained paper to provide that medieval texture to the design. I got this idea from looking at the map of Middle Earth and from watching Lord of the Rings because whenever they did use paper or read books in the films the paper was slightly yellow. If I could achieve a similar look it would make it more authentic and relevant to the Lord of the Rings theme.
I started by doing tea-stained paper because at the time I thought that coffee might be too dark for my design. What I did was put a couple of tea bags in a jun and left it to brew for around ten minutes to get as much of the colouring as possible. Once that was done I poured the liquid into a dish that was just big enough for the paper and put one sheet in it for around 3 minutes. I had to press it down a couple of times because the paper kept floating to the surface but after those 3 minutes I took it out, used a hair dryer to dry it a little bit and scrunched it before putting it on a plastic wallet to dry all of the way through.
I repeated the process with three other sheets of paper, and each paper was left in the liquid for longer. My second sheet was in it for 4 minutes, the third for 7 minutes, and the fourth for 10 minutes. I decided not to scrunch these ones because I could always ruffle it later and besides, when they dry they would automatically be a little crumpled. After the 10 minute sheet I did the 3 and 4 minute one again without crumpling them.
I then worked on the coffee because I wanted to experiment with it and was curious to see the results, and used the same method and timings as I did with the tea. I then left everything to dry for a few hours and decided to go work on my Celtic lettering in the meantime.
 |
| Left: tea / Right: coffee |
Celtic Lettering
After yesterday's try-out with the Celtic hand-lettering I wanted to dedicate the whole of today studying and perfecting what I had done. I did this by using the image below as reference and measuring each letter that I was going to use.
Before I did that though I hopped over to YouTube for some inspiration as I always find that I'm full of energy and motivation when I watch process videos.
(I'm going to keep this one in mind for future reference!)
I looked closely at the connection between each letter to figure out the width. For example, I based the A at 1.6cm because it was slightly wider than the other letters, with e at 1.5cm. H looked to be the same width as e so I put that at 1.5cm as well. L was considerably thinner so I put that at 1.2cm before setting it at 0.7cm.
I used the same techniques described above to do all of the other letters I was working on. Once I had covered a whole page I jotted down what I had noticed. Most of the letters are 1.5cm wide - especially the uppercase letters - but some of the lowercase letters were slightly thinner at 1.4cm.
Now that I had enough practice with them I wrote out "not all those" just to start off with, as I wanted to take it nice and slow. I measured the kerning at 0.2cm which left just enough room for each letter, and 1cm between each word. I can already see an improvement between this and my old design where I didn't really take the widths into account.
This measuring technique I used in the letters was successful so I also used it for the other letters I was going to use such as w, d, and o (because I wanted to practice more with the o). This was much easier to do because I used what I learnt before that letters were generally 1.5cm wide, but w was slightly wider at 1.6cm and n at 1.4cm.
I wrote the next sentence of my quote and this was done a lot quicker than my first sentence, and because of my results I decided to write out the whole quote. I took kerning into consideration and had to adjust it for some of the words such as "lost" and "are".
Once I was done practicing I tried out writing my own name just for fun. I used what I already knew to do this and the only new letters I had to study were z and E but that was done quite easily.
Tea & Coffee Paper - The Results
Once they were finally flattened and dried I scanned each one of them in at a high DPI so that I could use them as a texture for my design. This is what they looked like:
Tea
3 minutes
4 minutes
7 minutes
10 minutes
Coffee
3 minutes
4 minutes
7 minutes
10 minutes
There isn't much of a difference between the teas and coffees but I think that after looking at them all, I actually prefer the teas. This is because the coffee is a bit too dark for the design... Nevertheless I shall ask for some feedback at university tomorrow to see what my classmates and lecturers think.
Reflective Thinking - Summary
These experiments took a lot longer than I thought; the paper took around an hour to soak each one and then a few more hours to dry, then flatten, and the lettering took around 5 hours to do just because I wanted to take my time so that I could study the reference properly. I didn't realise just how long experiments take but... It's totally worth it.
I can already see an improvement in my Celtic lettering and I'm finding it a lot easier to do now, and no longer require referencing. This is due to repetition and making notes on things that I needed to improve, and if I carry on this technique to other lettering styles then I'll be able to do this project successfully.
My next step is to try the lettering on a curvy line like the would do in my design, and also look to see if there are any Photoshop tutorials to warp my lettering just in case that didn't work out. I might try and see if I got any black ink because I'm going to be using black for my design (everything will be in black with only the coffee/tea paper as the other colour).
Learning Outcomes:
[7] Developed their ability to learn through reflection on practice and experience.
[9] Developed their ability to work with complex material, analyse problems and identify appropriate solutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment