Calligraphy in memoriam

Today's excerpt from my sketchbook is in memoriam of a friend and very special person who passed away yesterday.

I don't do calligraphy very often (though I enjoy looking at other people's work immensely) but I felt his memory deserved my best efforts. 

You'll be missed, King Corgdahd. 

–meg

Texture practice

I love the fact that every week (usually) I get to spend a few hours with my art student, a fantastically talented 12 year old named Claire (one of the things we are going to work on soon is getting her portfolio together, so hopefully soon she will have a website I can link to).

Today we started on a project I did when I was in grad school–ink texture samples. 

Here is my sample page of pen and ink textures from graduate school

Which meant the first thing I did this morning was iron some paper that got stored in a tube (foolish me) and then measuring and laying out a grid for us to draw samples in.

Ironing and measuring out the grid!

Ironing and measuring out the grid!

I made 5 centimeter squares for her, which is a nice size to get a good feel for the texture you're making without having to dedicate a huge amount of time to a single thing. The best part is the final piece has a really impressive feel, even if there are squares you don't feel were as successful.

We were lucky enough to find a moth in the house during my lesson, so our little dude sat so I could work on capturing its wing patterning.

The wing texture and patterning from our moth friend.

The wing texture and patterning from our moth friend.

Next week we're going to the field museum, but the week after that I'm hoping to scan her work and start colorizing it using her favorite iPad art program!