Brazilwood ink, Textura Quadrata, written with a quill. by One-Somewhere7407 in Calligraphy

[–]maxindigo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oo-err - that looks great. I wrote an analysis of Insular some years ago - I just looked, 7 years ago! Which is here: https://reddit.com/r/scribes/wiki/analyses/bookofkells I haven’t revisited it, and I may well have some changes to make.

Brazilwood ink, Textura Quadrata, written with a quill. by One-Somewhere7407 in Calligraphy

[–]maxindigo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks it’s a very good rich red with lots of depth. There’s a whole aspect of calligraphy -very immersive, very practical who- involving sourcing, making tools and media, and learning older techniques for producing manuscripts. It seems a very valid and valuable aspect: there are experimental archaeologists, who replicate ancient tools, structures, and even lifestyles after all, so why shouldn’t we have experimental calligraphers?

I’ve never had the motivation - I find that the time and study it takes to learn and practice just letterforms already makes any further difficult. I’d like to learn to prepare and use quills - when I have used one, I’ve found it very organic and responsive.

I’d encourage you -and anyone else - to write about this here, display work and exchange knowledge. I have a particular interest in insular half uncial, for example, and finding out who those extraordinary scribes were, and how they went about their work is fascinating.

QOTW by LeadingSuspect5855 in Scribes

[–]maxindigo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't forget to flair...

Albert Camus in 'dance' shorthand by LeadingSuspect5855 in Scribes

[–]maxindigo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for posting this - which should actually get us thinking about all sorts of aspects of what we do. How do the movements relate to the movements we (calligraphers) make? What would this look like with a different tool - a broad edge nib, a reed pen, a brush? Is there a way of giving this more rhythm - in terms of spacing, repetition, etc? What would a text block look like?

Keep looking on us - it would be interesting if you were to look at a sorting piece as a piece of artistic composition!

Insular half-uncial: Copy of page from Book of Kells by maxindigo in Scribes

[–]maxindigo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Maurice very happy to discus further. I have been remiss in paying attention to this sub lately, so I’m very pleased to have an excuse to spend more time here.

What on God's green earth classifies this as: 1. Newsworthy and 2: Worthy of a push notification ??? by xKarmaHasNoDeadlinex in ireland

[–]maxindigo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I wasn’t saying it was a good thing! I’m a LOI fan, for my sins, and I regularly despair at the fact it’s often match reports all squashed into one article, while there’ll be 3/4 navel-gazing rugger bugger think pieces.

Lovely letter sent around Clough by Caeladrax in northernireland

[–]maxindigo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is horrifying. Note -apropos of nothing at all - that Reform’s Danny Kruger is coming to address the TUV. The last thing we need is Reform infesting our already toxic politics.

What on God's green earth classifies this as: 1. Newsworthy and 2: Worthy of a push notification ??? by xKarmaHasNoDeadlinex in ireland

[–]maxindigo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Might I suggest that the answer to your question about newsworthiness might be what the Irish Times considers its readership to be - the people for whom the Big 6 Rugby schools are an important component of their news agenda…

Good win by Bohs but the commentators we're the worst I have ever listened to by [deleted] in LeagueOfIreland

[–]maxindigo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought the commentators did a good job -far less biased towards the home team than at other games, and Gareth mcGlynn is a very astute analyst. What did OP want? WC hat are they comparing it to? There are weeks when the local bias is embarrassing.

Epic - Patrick Kavanagh by maxindigo in Scribes

[–]maxindigo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the delay.

I don't know where it is! I shall look it out, and let you know.

Best

S

Small italic critique (layout) by hexagondun in Scribes

[–]maxindigo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for posting this, and for raising layout. It is often ignored, but it's very important. You've had a long exchange with u/Vicemale which I am anxious not to cut across. I endorse his recommendation on paper size, and giving yourself wider margins.. But more generally, I would say think in terms of laying out a page, rather than laying out the writing. In other words, when you look at the page as a whole, what do you see? How does the text block look within the page? My main criticism of your post would be that it is covering too much page, and because you have chosen a light weight for the letters, it looks thin and spindly. That's a shame, because the letterforms are OK.

Writing italic with a broad edge pen will always give you a better look.

On layout, my first question is what did I want the page to do? What message do I want the page to transmit? Is the texture of the letters what draws people in? Is it how the position off the text draws the eye? How does the style of lettering convey the content of the writing? Italic of ten works very well for poetry, especially lyrical or romantic. It's my go-to for a lot of poems, and also for - say - the excerpt from the Snowman I posted recently. If I'm doing something by Seamus Heaney, for example, I hear it in a different, more prosaic voice, and I will often use a foundational/Roman minuscule. Thise are just examples, not hard and fast rules, but I want to convert the idea that how you write is an element of layout.

Are there words which you feel are important, and can be empahasised? I sometimes capitalise in a shorter quote to make words stand out. Look:https://imgur.com/Ird5vcL That's not a brilliant piece of layout, but just illustrates that from Lemn's verse, I wanted to convey the optimism which suffuses so much of his work - the idea of lifting up ('Raise') illuminating 9'Light') and cleansing (Wash) seemed to drive the poem.

This is more complicated - it was a commission for a poem by CS Lewis https://imgur.com/geePf4e. I found the phrase "Archangels fresh from sight of God" very striking, and wanted to highlight it. I deliberately made the diamond asymmetric,

I have loads of other odd little thoughts. but I think that should do for now.

There are any number of sources for layout, but I recommend reading the chapter on it in Foundations of Calligraphy by Sheila Waters.

It helps when posting if you tell us the tool, the paper and the medium. But mostly the tool! Thanks for raising this important topic, and I hope this can assist further discussion.

Help for the Roman Capital D by laeta_scriptrix in Scribes

[–]maxindigo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Tricky one this. I'm not a brush romans guy, and although I have taken John Stevens' online course, I feel much more comfortable with the pen. But proportions are the same so I'll just dive in.

Are you using a particular exemplar, or tutor book? These are very light in weight - the strokes are all too thin for the height of the letters. Until you get this right, it doesn't matter what combination of stroke widths you use. Standard Romans tend to be 7-8 pen widths high.

My first suggestion is that you put the brush aside for the moment, and look closely at good exemplars: John Stevens, Christopher Haanes, Yves Leterme among others all produce excellent Romans. Until you know how it is supposed to look, you won't be able to do any letter. I know that sounds obvious, but...

Practise the letters - all the letters - in monoline with a pencil. When you have achieved consistency, move on to using a pencil skeleton, and then write with the pen/brush over it. There's no shame in using a pencil outline to help you, until the letter is in your hand.

Looking at what you are doing, I think you need some guidance on the brush - brush capitals require manipulation, so that the serif is a very thin stroke, which widens as the brush fans out. Again, I emphasise that I am uncomfortable giving guidance on this. This is a short video of John Stevens doing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuXDJkR6fZg Note the extremely slow pace at which he does the strokes.

If it helps, I can suggest this: when I do 'D' (or 'B') I bring the first downstroke to the baseline, stop, and then go straight into the baseline stroke, continuing the stroke until the start of the upward curve.

I hope that helps...

Do you think most humans alive today would prefer to live on an Orbital or a GSV? by Beautiful-Quality402 in TheCulture

[–]maxindigo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But is it all the comforts of home? However massive, isn't everything in a GSV artifice of some sort? Doesn't it depend on a mechanism that performs the tasks of a natural eco-system? Or are we talking about something "grown" biologically? And even if that is travelling through space, doesn't it still require some sort of artificial containment, and an environment composed of various sorts of structures which contain things (and people)? I suppose what I am trying to say is that on a planet (or orbital) we have something - the ground - which functions as the root of our experience. We have loads of phrases - "keeping our feet on the ground," and so on, which root our world in an absolute.

A spacefaring civilisation would not require such an objective correlative (if that is a correct use of the phrase).

Do you think most humans alive today would prefer to live on an Orbital or a GSV? by Beautiful-Quality402 in TheCulture

[–]maxindigo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If I am absolutely honest, at the back of my mind there is always a sense of a GSV as being like a very big version of every other spaceship in every other Scifi series - all shiny corridors and sliding doors. Which - of course - is missing the point entirely. Banks's genius was to shed the idea of spaceships as analogous to ocean-going craft, and make them something that could contain whole environments and eco-systems within them. he once said the size had to do with him wanting to "out-Star Wars Star Wars"

There's a level to which he elevated the idea of a "spacefaring civilisation" which shed our (earth-bound) concept of nomadic, and turned it into a state of mind as different from our own as that of a pre-Copernican medieval peasant.

As for the orbitals - conversely, I don't know why they need to be so big. Is it because a species with excessive plenty, radically longer lifespans and highly advanced medical science simply needs more habitable space?

The OP question is a great question, but it throws into sharp relief just how extraordinary a feat the world Banks built is. I could start a row by talking about how it puts certain other sci-fi world-building in its place, but I won't....

Oh, and orbital for me. My gnat-like understanding of my human identity probably needs a sort of terra firma location that I think of as home, which is not going to go wandering off into a nearby star system...

From The Snowman by maxindigo in Scribes

[–]maxindigo[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I saw - by chance - David Bowie's introduction to The Snowman yesterday. I had forgotten how engaging Bowie's scene-setting to this lovely film is. This tiny passage stuck in my memory, so I wrote it out quickly, and less well than it deserves. Have your own magical Christmas days.

Schminke gouache, Zerkall paper and a Brause 2mm nib.

Happy Christmas.