Wednesday, November 27, 2024

A new design for Herbie's name

 Following my signwriting course I've not only been practising brushwork at home but also thinking about repainting Herbie's name on the side of the boat.  From all the hundreds of typefaces /styles/fonts (call them what you will) available which one should I choose?  Well I haven't decided but over the winter I'll experiment with a few, drawing them up more or less full size.  The one below use three sheets of A3.  The first one of these uses Bookman Old Style font . I might have a go actually painting a couple of letters, maybe E and R, from it to see how hard it is. I'm still not all that good with brush control and this time I'm not using masking tape except maybe for top and bottom edges. 


Apologies for my shadow there and that it's a bit faint - it's just pencil. Perhaps I'll go over it with a black felt tip pen.   Here's a closer look at a part of it.

I quite like its chunkiness compared with what is on Herbie at the moment. I just noticed that I had omitted the blocking on the outside top half of the R. Doh!  

I was never happy with the letters E on the current one. Notice on the pencil one I have the 'blocking' on the right whereas on the boat I did it on the left. I think I prefer the right. The 'new' one also has deeper blocking.  


On the course, Joby Carter told us we'll never look at letters the same way again.  He was dead right; everywhere I go I'm looking at the detail of lettering.

As I try other styles I'll post them here in case anyone has an opinion to share.


3 comments:

Adam said...

Briar Rose has the blocking on the left, and I notice that Andy Russell always seems to do it that way. If you look at his Instagram, there's a video of him doing it on a boat name, with just a few bits of masking tape for the corners.

Rainman said...

I’m not sure I like the tapering leg of the R in that font. As to blocking, which is simulated shading, surely it should be on the opposite side of the letters on opposite sides of the boat, as if steering towards the sun.

Herbie Neil said...

Adam, I discovered that a lot of signwriters prefer blocking on the left because it's quicker and easier and avoids more difficult work on R B P etc

Rainman, never seen that!