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.
5 comments:
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.
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.
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!
This is what happens when you become very knowledgeable about something. To me, it makes no difference whether the blocking in on the right or left, but I can see your recent course has had a big impact on the way you look at sign writing.
When we were having Oleanna sign written, Andy Russell suggested that the side the shadow goes on was traditionally one way in the north, the other in the south. Recently talking to painters it has now been suggested that it depends if the sign writer is right or left handed which I suspect is the more likely reason.
When Oleanna got her name I insisted that the shadows were as if the sun was above the bow casting a shadow on the stern side of all the letters. We may be the only boat on the network like this. Andy Russell had thankfully started with shadows on the wrong side and the paint was still wet enough to be removed. Of course no--one would notice unless they were looking for the shadows, or able to see both sides of your boat at once.
Pip
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