jaeleslie

panfer knew I would like this.


Roman Capitals- You have a proud and noble bearing,
and are of ancient pedigree, but you tend to be
very rigid and set in your ways.


What Calligraphy Hand Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I did this a couple times, not all that interested in the horoscope diagnostic exercise, but fascinated by the samples given. If you do it please feel free to copy the result here and I will tell you about the hand. Not all of them are actually handlettering. This one is a Roman hand, and looks like it is from a rather old manuscript although it could be a modern copyist's work. It is not as regular as the kind of Roman letters you see cut in stone, but hey, it's not cut in stone.

Edit: I take it back, that last line looks like a bunch of sample letters and not actual words from a manuscript. A relatively modern copyist perhaps, who has put in a K which is a Greek letter, and an XYZ which would seem to be from some kind of practice sheet (with the X crossed a bit too low). From the little serif marks they do look like they were made properly with a quill or reed.

It's been eons, huh. Well, I thought I should write something sensible here (since I have sent the LJ link to the teacher I am having for a class at the calligraphy conference this summer), instead of a quiz thingy (which I got rather interesting results on last night although I don't know if it actually posted here). Backwards from today: I've just finished another six-page apazine. On to the next, which is well in hand, but due the end of the week. Eeek. Last night stayed up looking at what everyone has been up to on LJ for the last few days. Also started putting together my supply list for the conference. Not that I need any art supplies you know. But there might be something.

The mornings have been entirely reading & writing. Started on a big fat book about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Osler's Web, of which I had clipped a review some years ago. It's quite detailed (interesting on the science and the politics of it) and at the same time surprisingly suspenseful. Also finished a load of Patricia McKillip, wrote quite a bit about it, and started Five Quarters of the Orange.

The weather has been the usual summer fronts rolling through, which make me swell up quite uncomfortably and have various aches (shoulders today, hands yesterday, etc). I can't remember the weekend. It was too long ago. Surely I've cooked something? oh yes rhubarb bread last week, and then rhubarb bars, which were polished off last night. Chili dinner. Chicken dinner the night before. Spinach salad with bacon. Gallons of fruit salad. And so on.

Number One Son is out of school, and beginning three weeks of drivers education this week. The Four O'Clock Rule is now in effect, as of Friday, which is: No loud music before four in the afternoon.

Friday is as far back as I can stretch my memory. We had a calligraphy study group, and made paper. I had provided some bleached hemp pulp, and some art paper pulp with blue and green pigments in them. Chris made Rothko compositions, and Marcia made geometric forms as is her wont, and we stood on the cement floor putting them through the press until my knees were stiff. Then we went to have a Thai lunch on Willy Street, and off to Olbrich to see the Thai Pavilion. The gardens have odd installations and sculptures scattered about. The watercolor show there unfortunately was over, but it was good to take a look at the exhibition space, of which the local watercolor society seems to make good use.

That's all. The next art fair is in less than four weeks now. My brain hurts. We'll have to take it out then.

I am looking forward in this brave new century to the titanic power struggle between Bush III or IV -- could one of his daughters possibly become our first female president? -- and Ahnold's kennedy-children.

Okay, so my political thought naturally tends toward fantasy. At least my George III scenario is more fun than apocalypse now.

This morning I submitted a poem to an international project by some papermakers and calligraphers I know, and in response got an email of thanks apparently from a tree.

http://treewhispers.com/

It is based in the midwest, with installations and workshops all over, in addition to the website. The website tells how to make circular papers with common materials you have around the house. Years ago, a friend who has since moved away showed me the simple, powerful technology of paper. The first pieces I made with her (with cattail fluff embedded) were round. Our study group might make some handmade paper pieces for this project too.

At Wiscon after I got set up in the art show I went to the Gathering event, and spent a couple hours there writing on people. I took photos of lots of them, and kept a list of most of the words I wrote on people. It is a good way to meet and talk to people one on one.

Maybe I will write more about the panel discussions I heard, particularly since I took notes. I went to Digital Art (artists Jeanne Gomoll, Erin McKee, Steve Johnson, Katie Clapham); Class in SF (where Eleanor Arnason had many interesting observations as usual); The Liars Panel; a writing panel on Scene (writers Ellen Kushner, Joan Vinge, Richard Chwedyk, Sue Blom); Genre Anxiety, or How Interstitial Is It?; and Economics in SF.

I like the kind of plans that form themselves from the flow. Today there are various levels of plans afoot.

1. Making dinner at the same time that I am at the gym in the late afternoon is always a challenge, even when I have not just taken a week off of cooking. So I think the thawed slab o beast should go in the oven on the timer, with some sauce from my magic refrigerator and peeled potatoes, before I leave the house. Some headway on the excess salad supply is anticipated.

2. My calligraphy study group had picked this Friday to meet. I am already set up for papermaking, thanks to studio cleanup for a session with my brother last week, using bleached hemp, and as professionals we will include any desired amendments I have on hand (I am desperately hoping no one will bring any more supplies to add to my hoard). We will show off our latest works, and each of us is also wheeling special plans into place even now for the Art Fair on the Square next month, and can use the usual mutual support and encouragement. Then there is a cool show of very large floral watercolors at Olbrich Gardens, so I was thinking we could have a late Thai lunch (oneish?) on Williamson Street, then go see the paintings and also the Thai Pavilion at Olbrich which is our latest city treasure.

3. Last week I purchased our memberships for the Glasgow Worldcon before the rates went up. Then my mom during her visit gave me lots of info about their usual hotels and amusements on the Isle of Skye, we compared calendars and found substantial overlap. Number One Son is eager to see the Highland Games, heck, he is eager to compete, and wear the kilt, and also eager to go to a worldcon, and he is talking fast & loose about finding some pick-up rugby game somewhere in Britain. I plan to take him to the Tower of London as a precaution, and then Walsall for a dozy Precursor weekend with old pharts like me, then the Games with the grandparental units, then the worldcon where he can make his way among his own age cohorts, then probably back to Skye for more treading of the ancestral homeland of his namesake McAskills. There be jiants in his family history, arrr, why he now towers over me, but the troublemakers mostly left for the colonies... I will take him to as many castles as he can stand and maybe then some. It is all falling into place.

The latest media phenomenon of wall-to-wall memorials to Reagan intercut with live Bush at the D-Day "celebration" (yes I heard it called that) is pretty nauseating.

But Mr S would like me to point out that the Gipper was Knute Rockne. Not the actor who portrayed him.

It's a frigging dynastic mythology.

1. First off I met brisingamen and peake, then a long list of others, Steven & Laurie, Leah, Luke & Juliebata & Whump &...
2. First conversations of sports, strangely enough, then of deconstructing martinis
3. Ellen Klages collected current signatures on the backs of an entire deck of fifties Authors cards for the Tiptree auction
4. Try restaurant El Pastor for nondairy Mexican food
5. Make another platter that says Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing
6. Amy Thompson recommends Time Management for the Creative Person by Lee Silber
7. Speak FRIEND & enter
8. "I'm sorry" "Just don't do it again"
9. Send Dr Wilson's info to Joan V
10. The Whole Wide World is the name of that movie about Robert E Howard that we might as well watch now that we've watched the Conan movies
11. Write off memberships and hotel as business expense
12. Pirates need cups that say on them "Name your poison"
13. The Liars' Panel suggested that books about high gravity planets should use compressed fonts
14. Diane Martin (and others) might like to see panel reports from all those panels she couldn't go to
15. Steve Johnson would like info I have about bookbinding possibilities
16. Mike Ward has been taking photos of old magazine covers, up to 1922, and archiving them at magazineart.org (everyone needs a hobby)
17. I have volunteered to make August apa cover
18. Penny suggests new title in series would be Space Babe's Adventures... in Space
19. Where Ideas Come From is from little books like this one (which was very handily hanging around my neck)
20. Will receive e-mail inquiring further about WisCon history
21. Send Ruth the link to Eleanor Arnason's speech when it is published at Eileen Gunn's website
22. Box titled "The Secret to Success" (inside:) Practice
23. "I'm not lazy, I'm just having a Pajama Day" sez Dave Emerson every so often
24. Check when that pontoon boat tours the lakes
25. There's a nice show of large floral watercolors at Olbrich Gardens, and the Thai Pavilion makes a nice destination before or after Thai luncheon on Willy Street

Came home from Wiscon with only four new books. Okay, five counting the new Wiscon issue of Extrapolations journal. And two of them were freebies. Warner Books sent tons of new books (two by Nalo Hopkinson, I got her Skin Folk and an Octavia Butler book) yay Warner Books! so many that they were unpacked at several different times during the convention. Photographer who was there when the hardbacks went on the table told me later it was an ugly scene... then for the last distribution a sign went up saying to Form A Line. The ones I actually bought were another Ursula LeGuin book of essays (from Shambhala Press) and Jennifer Stevenson's new Trash Sex Magic, great title I'm sure you'll agree.

So even though I am not allowed in bookstores you see how they follow me home. It was not my idea today to go to Frugal Muse, Chris & Penny came up with that on their own (okay someone told them but it wasn't me) and I was just their driver. And then as long as I was there I decided not to resist and feel bad but just to go with it, so I picked out a bunch of books and then sensibly put back half of them. I bought a second copy of the same pulp Grimm's Fairy Tales that I have had since I was six that is held together with a rubber band and which I had forgotten what the cover looked like, for only a dollar. A beautiful children's book illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon. A book of essays on style. A book of essays by famous modern artists about what they think they are doing anyhow. A technical book on basic art materials and procedures with lots of useful information. A book on polymer (acrylic) painting which fills in where the other leaves off. A bound galley of a recent book-length essay on colors that I had thought sounded interesting in reviews.

Then we went to the post office and I learned all about how to mail large boxes of books cheaply to the U.K. in a Surface M Bag. The post office employees here are my friends, and the one we saw knew right off the top of his head what you will search for in vain on the USPO website.

It is now well and truly over as I have put the Dead Dog to its well-earned rest. Still a bit wired, so here I am to tell you about it. ( Read more... )