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.