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.