Signwriting course - final two days

 On Thursday, we were all thinking about our final pieces to take home. Much planning and practising going on with Joby giving advice about letter spacing. I opted to stick with my TEA sign, hoping that I could get my straight lines straighter.  More arty people were dreaming up words with fancy fonts.

This time I got better with the pounce pad and managed to transfer my pattern in clearer dusty dots onto the board. It seems you have to rub rather than bash with the pad.  Joby did a lesson on how to draw shadows from your '3D' block letters.  This is not a simple thing to get right, and he showed us many examples of how professional signwriters have got it wrong.  As Joby usually does, he has worked out a simple method to get it right.  Sadly, simple though it is, you really need to see it, so don't expect me to duplicate it here. Sorry about that.

I did manage to get my lines straighter after another hour or so of practicing  boxes and by Friday morning I had my basic letters done and was ready to do the blocking. I decided to do this in two shades of green with the darker shades being where the light would not fall.  Here I am with the lighter shade on the sides

Then after waiting for that to dry, the underneath bits.

Its hard to put one colour accurately positioned against another so little gaps are visible on mine.  Partly it's just nervousness about making a mistake.  Something that can only be overcome with practice, which I why I bought enough stuff to take home and practice over the winter.

At the last minute on Friday afternoon I decided to put some little embellishments on the letters.  Little dots and lines on the pink bits.  Again being super cautious they are barely visible in the final photo - another example of needing to develop confidence in brush strokes.

So am I now a good signwriter?  Goodness gracious no!  This course is fascinating and thorough and you do by the end understand how to do it, but actually doing well it is a skill you have to develop over a lot of practice.  Everybody on the course learned loads of stuff and I think we'll all go on to develop better skills.  I would think about 70 percent of those attending want to go on to be able to earn money by writing signs or to do signs for their own businesses.  Others like me just wanted to learn and perhaps do some stuff for their own personal use.

So how would I sum up the course?  Is it enjoyable?  Yes. Is it thorough? Yes. Joby is a true master of his craft and he happily gives away all his trade secrets and tricks and tips, so I wouldn't think anyone teaches it better. And as he says, you will never look at lettering the same way again.  It's true, you do notice all sorts of detail you didn't see before.  You will by the end have a good understanding of letters, techniques, materials etc. It's not an easy (or cheap)  course and the days are long and quite tiring.  

Would anyone who completed the course be able to paint the name on their narrowboat?  Some would. If you want it to look reasonably professional you have all the information and tricks you need to do it.  With that knowledge, it's all about how good you are at handling a brush which is not as easy as you might think.. For the rest of us, with a bit more practice I don't see why not, as long as you don't expect to be anything like as good as the top guys like Phil Speight or Dave Moore etc.

Signwriting course days 2 & 3

 Day 3 was a bit depressing.  It started off well enough with me drawing out the name HERBIE in a font called Clarendon.

This I managed to do pretty well, while some others on the course struggled with scaling up their words.

Next we were asked to prick round the lines of our work and 'pounce' them onto our paint boards. Pouncing is a method whereby you used a powder filled pad to dab and wipe over your pricked holes which leaves a join the dots pattern on the board behind.  I found the result somewhat faint which didn't help at all when it came to painting on the board. My results were depressingly poor.

Not at all helped by the fact that Valentin sitting next to me did a fantastic job on his piece.

Valentin has come all the way from Brazil to do the course! As you can see, he's good!

We decided my main problem was using too large a brush for the size of the letters, and not pouncing strongly enough so I couldn't see where I was going.

So today I decided to choose a shorter word with larger scale letters - still in Clarendon and reverted to my TEA from earlier.  First of all though Joby showed us how to 'block' the letters with some neat tricks to get quick and accurate results.  He asked us to practice on the letters I A O and V to experience different shapes and angles.  Using Joby's tips and tricks I was able to knock this up quite quickly, although I'm not too sure about the O.

So then I set about blocking out and pricking TEA, then pouncing it onto the board ready for painting.

Joby suggested just painting the blocking first as an experiment, so using a smaller brush this time and having clearer pouncing I managed to produce this, which I rather like.

Then I did the letters without block, again not perfect but I'm improving every time.

You can just make out the block pouncing there.  It all gets a bit grubby but it all wipes clean quite easily. Far from perfect but quite an improvement from my earlier efforts.  Remember the actual painting is entirely freehand - no rulers or masking tape.

Tomorrow is the final day and the plan is to repaint the word (or words in some people's cases) with blocking and possibly shadows, which Joby will teach in the morning.  Some people are doing signs with smaller letters and different fonts.  I'm concentrating on larger chunkier lettes such as you m ight see on the side of a narrowboat.

Then we'll have a finished article to take away at the end, along with a copy of Joby's excellent and comprehensive signwriting book and three signwriting brushes (included in the cost of the course) - plus any signwriting materials and equipment we choose to buy.  I think most of us will be buying quite a few items to continue practicing at home.

Signwriting with Joby Carter

Today was day two of my introduction to proper sign writing, a course taught by Job Carter of the well known but now sadly defunct Carter's Steam Fair.  

The course is over five consecutive days and Joby teaches 15 students on each course. I think he said he will have done ten of these this year.

The workshop where the course is held has a lot of inspiration round the walls.

It's hard - very hard.  The first day was OK.  We had to study some different type faces then draw them up at three times the scale on the page.  This meant accurately measuring each part of the letters.  The idea is to get you to really look at the letters in fine detail.  At the end of the day I had produced this.

On day two we started to learn to paint -first how to look after brushes, how to manage paint viscosity, how to hold a palette and mahl stick, then how to paint a straight line and a circle. No masking tape, just chinagraph pencil lines to follow. Everybody was finding it surprisingly difficult, especially to get a square edge at the top and bottom of the vertical lines. We spent hours doing it and were somewhat better at the end but far from perfect.  Actually circles were not so hard as straight lines, which was unexpected. Here I am practicing (actually I should have been holding my palette at the time but another student asked me to pose and I forgot the palette.)

Those lines look deceptively OK from here, but believe me they are far from it. When we get to the end of the board, we wipe it clean and start again.

For a break from our struggles, Joby gave us a tour of the yard where what remains of the fairground stuff is stored, along with more art work.

This stair panel was painted by Job's mum.  What can you say other than Wow!

and how's this for a nice bit of coach painting?

Later in the day, we were asked to choose a short word and draw it out to help understand correct spacing between letters.  Here's what I did.

I think tomorrow will be more of the same.  We are promised that by the time we leave on Friday afternoon we will each have produced a creditable hand painted sign to take away.  Hard to imagine right now!!

After some months more practice I may tackle repainting Herbie's name panel.  That's the hope.

Stay tuned for further reports.