Art and Craft
This job from the corporation is a good one, paying well, and "up my alley" in most ways (except for whimsy, and a prescribed lack of people, you can't have everything!). It is a play on one of those many old postcards that say, "Greetings from......" and the major word is in big, fat letters that have photographs in each letter. You've seen them. We've all seen them.
One of the reasons they are so effective is that they are bold, using fat letters and a 3-D effect for "punch". Another reason is that they combine that boldness with the illustration in the letter, which often can be detailed and delicately textured. So, the combination of the two works very well.
That's what I'm doing here, and I was faced with this challenge: how may I make the letters large enough for me to work within, and still have the curves in the letters be accurate. In other words, how may I make printed letters big and clean and then work within them, as my hand done lettering was not going to be good enough. Here's how I solved it: first, I recreated my letters by tracing them on to paper from a printed page (when I had enlarged the print, it really looked shabby and ragged), then I used a one-point perspective to create the 3-D affect. I made this as clean as I could, and took it to Kinko's to have enlarged on the biggest machine they have, with the best bond paper they have. I was hoping that this paper would be good enough to accept some of my watercolor paint, but not all of it.
I enlarged my type to 25" wide, took it home, and carefully cut out the inside of each letter, then spray mounted this bond paper on to my best watercolor paper, thus giving me the surface I really wanted on the inside of the letters, and still hoping that the bond paper that had the copy would be good enough to handle less taxing painting, as there were some touches that needed to be done outside the letters too. When I experimented on this paper, it worked well enough. Now, I had what I needed, except that the enlarged letters didn't look so great, and needed to have thicker lines anyway, due to the fact that eventually this art was going to be used at only 3" wide, among other sizes. So, I went over each letter with my pens, thickening them up - this was a painstaking process that couldn't be done free-hand. It took my about 3 hours to do.
Now, I've got it where I want it, and began projecting images into the letter areas. Nice craftsmanship, if I say so myself. The color work will be similar in apprach, using color value a great deal to highlight some of the images and let others sink in to the background.
One of the reasons they are so effective is that they are bold, using fat letters and a 3-D effect for "punch". Another reason is that they combine that boldness with the illustration in the letter, which often can be detailed and delicately textured. So, the combination of the two works very well.
That's what I'm doing here, and I was faced with this challenge: how may I make the letters large enough for me to work within, and still have the curves in the letters be accurate. In other words, how may I make printed letters big and clean and then work within them, as my hand done lettering was not going to be good enough. Here's how I solved it: first, I recreated my letters by tracing them on to paper from a printed page (when I had enlarged the print, it really looked shabby and ragged), then I used a one-point perspective to create the 3-D affect. I made this as clean as I could, and took it to Kinko's to have enlarged on the biggest machine they have, with the best bond paper they have. I was hoping that this paper would be good enough to accept some of my watercolor paint, but not all of it.
I enlarged my type to 25" wide, took it home, and carefully cut out the inside of each letter, then spray mounted this bond paper on to my best watercolor paper, thus giving me the surface I really wanted on the inside of the letters, and still hoping that the bond paper that had the copy would be good enough to handle less taxing painting, as there were some touches that needed to be done outside the letters too. When I experimented on this paper, it worked well enough. Now, I had what I needed, except that the enlarged letters didn't look so great, and needed to have thicker lines anyway, due to the fact that eventually this art was going to be used at only 3" wide, among other sizes. So, I went over each letter with my pens, thickening them up - this was a painstaking process that couldn't be done free-hand. It took my about 3 hours to do.
Now, I've got it where I want it, and began projecting images into the letter areas. Nice craftsmanship, if I say so myself. The color work will be similar in apprach, using color value a great deal to highlight some of the images and let others sink in to the background.
posted by Rich Sigberman at
9:00 AM
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