Our lettering lessons this week were focused on the work 'harvest'. The font was more casual in nature and we were encouraged to add little loops and stems in keeping with the theme. I even made the lies wiggly and doubled them to look more like vines.

Since I liked the look of vine lettering, I kept at it as I wrote out the alphabet on day two.

On day three we wrote words we associated with harvest and did a little pumpkin illustration. I used my colored pencils on my page.

When we wrote out a scripture on day four, I chose Matthew 9:37. I also switched from pumpkins to wheat for the illustration and colored the lettering with a rainbow of hues.

My day five was going to be the same scripture reference but when I opened my Bible I had already done work on that page - although with a different scripture. So I skipped over to Luke 10:2 which is essentially the same thoughts.

The colors ended up being duller than I had wanted but I did manage a whole cornucopia, including both the pumpkin and wheat plus acorns, Indian corn, grapes, apples and a gourd.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 5:12 PM PDT

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When we were in Los Angeles last year we spent a couple of hours at The Getty Center and wished we had much more time there. So, earlier this week, we made time for it and flew down to spend two days viewing all the artwork on display.

What a treat! There is something magical in standing in front of a painting of irises by Van Gogh, a sculpture by Degas, a landscape by Monet... To see the brushstrokes, fingerprints in the paint, chisel marks of a master - it is almost overwhelming.

One small section of the museum is an area called The Drawing Room in which a small-scale statue, a couple of marble busts and several paintings are displayed. There are benches with built-in easels around the room and you are provided with paper, a large clipboard and a packet of drawing materials.

With these supplies you can sit and draw - with the sculptures and paintings as inspiration. What Fun!

I selected one of the busts and drew in sepia conte crayon. Here is my model:

And here is my finished work - about 1/2 hour of time invested:

For anyone who desires, they will put your work up on the bulletin board. Thus one can say they have work hanging in The Getty!

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 1:50 PM PDT

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It really frustrates me that I can only apply ONE topic to blog entries. If I had my way, I would tag this one 'Bible Journaling', 'Lettering' and 'Tutorials' because it is really all three. I had to choose what I might want people to search for in order to find it.

This week I have been the Guest Host on the Creative Bible Journaling Facebook group in their Lettering Lodge. This is the same place I have been getting my Bible lettering inspiration from lately.

The font I am teaching is the new one I designed a few weeks ago. As soon as this is posted, I will go back and delete the original entry as the samples for it were poorly executed and the photography was bad, as well.

So here goes:

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DAY 1 - Good Morning! I'm your Guest Host in the Lettering Lodge this week.

We're going to be working on a new font I named 'Gather Round' because it is ALL about the circles! And the word we will focus on this week is 'Trust'.

This font takes some prep work to make sure the letter shapes are correct and consistent.

First, you will establish your letter height with penciled lines – one for the base and one for the top. Then add a dashed ascender line half a letter space above the top, a dashed descender line half a space below the base and a midline in the center. You will have a total of five lines.

Practice making perfectly round circles in pencil between the base and top lines. For this step, draw lightly and circle loosely, round and round until the shape takes form. Make whole rows of them. This is a crucial step because EVERY LETTER in this alphabet is traced in-part on the outline of that circle.

When you’ve got a good row of 5 circles, go back with pencil and trace the parts of the circle that form the lowercase letters. Add extension lines as needed to complete the form.

NOTE: the uppercase letters are all based on two circles stacked on top of one another.

Trace your formed letters in ink and then erase all your guidelines, circles and penciled letters.

Here is a step-by-step sample sheet:

DAY 2 - Today we are going to learn the letter shapes for both the lowercase and uppercase alphabets in the font we started yesterday. The guide pages attached show the step-by-step with letters that share the same characteristics grouped together (o through q, c and e, r though m, etc)

Note that some letters use TWO circles. These may be side by side or they may be stacked and overlapped.

When you have completed the sheet, erase all the pencil lines FOR THE LAST, FULLY FORMED LETTER ONLY.

This first picture is the instruction sheet for lowercase.

If you want to print practice sheets they are available in PDF form at http://mystudio3d.com/practicesheets.pdf

Now you can go on to the uppercase letters. Note that every letter is based on TWO stacked circles. Again, some letters will be double-wide as well.

The guide page attached shows the step-by-step, grouping the letters that share the same characteristics. Since these are different in the uppercase than in the lowercase the letter order is different here than on the last sheet.

When you have completed the sheet, erase all the pencil lines FOR THE LAST, FULLY FORMED LETTER ONLY.

Again, if you want to print practice sheets they are available in PDF form at http://mystudio3d.com/practicesheets.pdf (all the sheets are combined there so printing one set will give you all the pages you need)

Now you should prepare a new practice sheet and draw all your alphabet in the correct order by referring to your instruction pages for correct letter forms.

Leave the first set of guide circles in place for reference but, when you have completed the sheet, erase all the pencil lines FOR THE LAST, FULLY FORMED SET OF LETTERS ONLY.

There is a sheet for this in the practice pages as well at http://mystudio3d.com/practicesheets.pdf

DAY 3 - Lettering lessons so far have been kind of regimented so now we are going to play!

First, let’s practice making banners to contain words or phrases. There is a great set of banner lessons at https://www.thepigeonletters.com/single-post/2016/08/11/6-Step-by-Step-Banners

Then we’ll practice overlapping your letters slightly. This comes in handy when a l-o-n-g word must fit in a smaller space. There are hints for this in the notes on the page.

Finally, play with Drop Caps. In our case, the letter height of the capitol letter stays the same but the descender line becomes the base for it.

DAY 4 - Next, your assignment is to write a scripture with the word ‘trust’ using the new font and some play-day features. We’re using paper or a journal page for this exercise. We’ll be in the Bible tomorrow.

I worked on scrapbook paper with Jeremiah 17:7 (NIV) – “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.”

(Do you know, this font was a gift of God just a few weeks ago. As I sat listening to the choir one Sunday, some of the forms came to me and I turned to the back of my notebook and just wrote out the whole lowercase alphabet. Then I actually took my sermon notes with it – not as fast as my usual scribbled notes but I got down all the key phrases!)

DAY 5 - The final homework is to work in your Bible on a ‘trust’ scripture using the new font.

The reference I used is Proverbs 3:5 (NIV) – “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

From the ‘play day’ lesson, I used the space-saving overlapping letters as well as banners. I also practiced colored pencil blending. I have been using the cross in my illustrations in the Old Testament a lot lately. After all, the whole of scripture is pointing toward Christ so that really makes me want to tie it all together in my ‘word pictures’.

***It was a privilege to prepare lessons for the Lettering Lodge this week. All those who played along did a wonderful job. God bless you all!***

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 7:26 AM PDT

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On assignment to journal the scripture Psalm 27:1, I wanted to focus on salvation as the theme. Even though the scripture was written before Jesus walked the earth and died on the cross, the gospel is really just ONE STORY that all points to Him.

I went looking on Pinterest for 'stained glass window cross' and found two that were free line drawings. I combined the two drawings and added some elements like the 3D lines on the cross.

Then I used several colored images for reference in making the window come to life.

I used a much thicker pen on this one so it would look more like the leading on stained glass.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:31 PM PDT

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We had a challenge on the Bible journaling group I belong to, to use colored pencil blending and highlighting on a Bible page. My mind immedaitely skipped to rainbows so I turned to Genesis 9.

I think the thing that struck e in meditating on these verses as I was doing the artwork was that God did not put the rainbow in the sky to remind US of his covenant (to never flood the entire earth again) but he says: When I bring clouds over the earth and  the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you.

Even though the rainbow obviously does not have dividing lines between the various colors, I drew them in with my pen to keep the illustration in the same style as my other work in this Bible.

I did color and blend across the lines, though, then I followed up by blending the colors even more with a Prismacolor colorless blender pencil.

I left uncolored the word 'rainbow' the three times it appeared in these verses and then went back to fill them in with a contrasting color.

In the lettering, I only wroteout verse 13. I gave special attention to the word 'rainbow' and colored it with blended pencils in the same colors as the main illustration.

I added a little drawing of the dove coming back to the ark with an olive branch.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 6:22 PM PDT

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Sweeter than honey - that perfectly describes the font we used this week for journaling.

We started out on Monday with the assigned word:

You can see that I,once again, struggled to keep this as an upright font. We were asked to note that on a letter like the lowercase N the upstroke separates and leans away from the leading downstroke. The caps have a bit of curve.

On Tuesday we learned the full alphabet:

Again with the leaning letters! I did do better with the upstokes pulling away.

Wednesdays lesson got us to playing with applying color with bubble wrap! I used three colors of Distress Inks and applied my color to three different backgrounds. After lettering on them, I added bee stickers and made them into card fronts.

On the last background I changed to a honeycomb lettering style I found on Pinterest. I then drew a little beehive. All three cards have accents added with gold gel pen.

On Thursday used the new font to write a scripture. I had some hexagon embossed cardstock a friend had sent in a swap and I used a Distress Ink pad to sweep over it to add color. I then used a brown Sigma Micron pen to do my lettering and added thickened lines with a Prismacolor brush marker.

I went back and traced the thin lines and both sides of the thick lines in black before adding a peel-off bee sticker in brown. I made this one into a card as well.

As usual, our Friday assignment was to use the new font in our Bible. I chose excerpts from Psalm 19:9-10.

I used the font in a very straightforward manner  and even made it stand upright as it was designed to do! I found pictires of honey dippers on Pinterest and drew mine onto the page with Sigma Micron 01 black pen. I used double lines on most of it to camoflage wobbles in the long lines. 

Coloring was done with Prisacolor pencils with accents of white gel pen.

When I was writing in the reference, I accidentally wrote 'Proverbs' instead of 'Psalms'. To fix this I used the Sigma Micron pen to color over the whole reference in a solid block. Then I wrote in the correct one using white gel pen. When it was dry, I used colored pencil to make the white pen cream colored to match the page. Crisis averted.

Next week I am teaching the font we will use (online). The lessons will get posted here on Friday.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 10:42 AM PDT

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I am amazed by the tutorials that come out of Missouri Star Quilt Company week after week. Every one is easy, innovative and attractive.

But there are some that I just can't wait to dive right in on.

I rarely print out the accompanying materials with materials, measurements and instructions. Instead, I have my little tablet of graph paper and I make sketches of the blocks, the step-by-step and layouts. I pencil in measurements as I go.

Usually, they work out just fine even though I don't often make them in the size they are designed. This is because they are mostly using pre-cuts in full packets (or multiples of them) and I just work out what size I want the finish to be and cut the number of pieces needed to do up the pattern.

The tutorial for this quilt is called Totally Tulips and starts with 10" precuts and makes a quilt measuring 89" x 90". That's huge.

I am generally making lap quilts so I only needed 12 tulips. That used 24 10" squares from my stash - half colors and half greens. I used muslin I had on hand for the background.

I did overall large stippling over all the white. Then I did three wavy vees on all the flowers and stitch in the ditch up both sides of each stem.

The backing is a modern print with little blocks of color on point. It has all the colors used on the front. It looked so nice I used it for the binding as well.

This will go to the hospital Passages program.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 7:59 PM PDT

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Combining a couple of favorite things (lettering and drawing) into the artform called Bible journaling makes me happy. Digging into the Bible to find just the right scripture to suit a theme is time well spent and I always find something good to meditate on.

This past week, the online group was working on a tall font based on ovals. It makes a space-saving font that can be made to look casual or elegant, depending on how it's used.

I started on Monday with the assigned word in the font:

Note how the lowercase shoulders come half a space above the midline?

Tuesday we tackled the whole alphabet:

Here, you can see, I narrowed the width of the letters to make them more oval.

Wednesday, we were challenged to write out a verse of a hymn with the work 'lamb' in it and to draw an image of a lamb. I decided to write out the entire song I wrote in 2009 and drew a lamb from a photograph I found on the internet.

I had to make my own lined paper in Word to get the size and spacing right for the number of lines I had. I then wrote out the whole thing in pencil on that lined paper and then used the lightpad to trace it onto a clean sheet of paper using a fine-line marker.

I traced my sketched lamb on the page in fine-line marker and used colored pencils to finish it.

On Thursday, we did our usual activity of writing a scripture on paper using the font. I wrote mine up and then did some pen-work to give it the look of an invitation.

Today (Friday) we took the new font to our Bible, selecting a scripture that used the work 'lamb'.

I liked the lamb I had drawn on Wednesday so decided to include that on my page. When I was originally looking for pictures of lambs I saw several that showed the wounded lamb and included a cross. I decided to add these as well as a crown and banner (purple for royalty).

All coloring with Prismacolor pencils.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 2:53 PM PDT

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New font practice included writing out the alphabet:

...then I went directly to a scripture:

This wa a 'natural' font for me to draw - a lot like my natural printing style.

I designed a pair of hands (drawn from my own) holding a globe on which I filled in the continent shapes with the name of Jesus.

Colored with Prismacolor pencils after inking with Prismacolor Premier fine line marker in my Bible.

Matthew 12:21 was perfect for the word font 'hope'.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 9:44 AM PDT

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Last month I recommended a new book I had picked up called "Hand Lettering For Relaxation" by Amy Latta. I am about 6-7 lessos into this workbook and still enjoying it very much.

Today, I picked up another book - one that I have had checked out from the library. It is called "You Can Draw It In Just 30 Minutes : See It and Sketch It in a Half-Hour Or Less" by Mark Kistler.

The techniques he teaches are simple, easy to follow, and very effective.

Here are my sketch sheets from the first two lessons:

Are they great works of art? No! But my intent is to be able to learn to di sketches from photos (or life) for my Bible Journaling, instead of often relying on someone else's sketch.

I tried it out on the Bible page that will be posted on Friday and I am very pleased with the results.

I recommend this book very highly.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 10:41 PM PDT

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I had a short out-of-town getaway last week so did not stay on task with the new font in the lettering lessons I follow. I ended up finishing this week.

The font was titled 'Praise'. One of the 'goals' of the instructor was to have these letters 'bounce' instead of sitting on the same baseline. I tried -really I did.

The second day was, as usual, the whole alphabet. You'll note that I did not go back and trace any of these in ink and erase the pencil lines:

And the third day lesson was to write familiar words. I wrotesome hymn lyrics and called that the homework for day 3 and day 4.

I'm still not enamoured with the bouncing letters so, when I took this font to my Bible, I made those letters line up like little soldiers. I am very happy to have them standing in nice little rows. :)

I found that Psalm 47:6 had plenty of opportunities to use the word 'Praise' in the assigned font.

The guitar illustration is a re-drawing of one I founf in my Pinterest feed the other day. What great timing!

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 10:14 AM PDT

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With a bit of a busy week (again) I did the lettering lessons hit and miss. The font this time was named 'beautiful'.

The first lesson I worked on was skipping right to the full alphabet. I found it extremely challenging to make this cursive alphabet 'stand up' so it looks more italics that it is supposed to.

I am not overly fond of the lowercase U when it connects with some letters. Just looks strange. You'll notice below that some letters that have a trailing loop do strange things when juxtaposed with the leading loop on the R.

We also worked on designing wreaths this week.

For my 'in the Bible' journaling I chose Isaiah 52:7 because I have been wanting to this one for some time.

Idea for the feet was found on Pinterest.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 12:57 PM PDT

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I never did get around to journaling a scripture for the 'strength' font we were taught this week - what a whirlwind my week turned into!

I did get the first day done with the font name as the practice word:

Then on Tuesday I got the full alphabet done:

Thursday I did a scripture on a journal page:

I kind of went nuts with the doodling on this page!

All week long I looked up scriptures on 'strength' and 'strong', trying to come up with one that I could illustrate. I never did come up with anything so I dodn't carry this font into my Bible.

One fine day, it will be the perfect alphabet to use for something, just not this week!

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 1:00 PM PDT

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When I was looking up verses on PEACE to do yesterday I had a hard time deciding between two of them. So I decided to do the other one toda y and here we are with Romans 12:18.

I decided to make this one all about the lettering and wording so did minimal work on the illustrating.

Istarted with the words and then added frames, banners and ribbons around them to tie them together. This was a bit of fun to do.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 3:20 PM PDT

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When I was looking up verses on PEACE to do yesterday I had a hard time deciding between two of them. So I decided to do the other one toda y and here we are with Romans 12:18.

I decided to make this one all about the lettering and wording so did minimal work on the illustrating.

Istarted with the words and then added frames, banners and ribbons around them to tie them together. This was a bit of fun to do.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 3:20 PM PDT

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This week, the lettering lesson on the Bible journaling Facebook group was titled 'peace'.

I went directly to writing the alphabet in both upper- and lower-case.

To use it in my Bible, I illustrated Isaian 26:3 with Multnomah Falls, an iconic, semi-local tourist attraction in the Columbia Gorge, Oregon.

I worked from photos on Pinterest (there are many).

To me, waterfalls are very peaceful and this is one of our favorites.

I love these lettering lessons!

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 2:17 PM PDT

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Day Six of the Online Card Class on Rainbows was for three techniques that did not fit into the categories presented on days 1-5.

First up was Kristina with using a rainbow of liquid dots to create flowers around a stamped sentiment on a white card.

I didn't have the materials she used but I had a whole rainbow of Stickles so I set about making flowers with those. I used dots, lines and teardrops to create these sparkly bits of deliciousness.

I liked this so much, I made a second card. Both were cut a little larger and mounted on shimmery yellow card bases.

Then Laura had us stamp (mask and stamp again) a large floral and color it with Copic markers. She showed several ways of arranging the rainbow but I really prefered this version with each flower head as its own rainbow. I colored a white diecut word t match the orange hues.

I went over all the lines with a Sharpie and added dots with a white pen to the stamens.

I skipped the third lesson, although I do plan to do it at some point (using acrylic paints on a gelli plate).

Don't know what is planned for the 'wrap up day'. And then the class will be over.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 12:00 PM PDT

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We're on to day 5 of the Rainbow Maker Online Card Class.

I skipped using the lessons offered by Kristina and Laura, just completing several taught by Jennifer. These took a lot of time to dry (overnight) whitch explains the delay in posting.

For the first card we were instructed to use watercolor markers in stripes on watercolor paper, spritz with water and let blend to one side. After drying with a heat tool we used a stencil and texture mousse applied with a blending tool. I did not have any mousse so I used a palette knife to apply Heritage Handicrafts Dimensional Paint in Snow White.

Part of the directions, after completing all the backgrounds were on ways to layer white diecuts for elegant embellishments.

Technique two was to create a radiant blend using only three colors blended in concentric circles. I used a semi-glossy cardstock which made the colors more pastel. Jennifer then used glitter paste through a stencil in a radiating pattern. I had neither a radiating stencil or glitter paste so I used some modeling paste that dries semi-transparent.

The sentiment is three stacked white diecuts.

This faux watercolor is applied with Distress Inks and a blending tool then spritzed with water to allow it to blend when held to one side. After drying with a heat tool a stencil was laid on it and Versamark ink pressed through the holes. I did not have irridescent embossing powder like Jennifer used so I went with gold.

I added a white diecut panel and one of the leftover sentiment diecuts from day two.

Here's a better look at the shine of the gold embossing:

The next card starts out with a soft rainbow applied with blending tools. After thoroughly drying with a heat tool, a stencil is laid on and Versamark applied over the whole exposed surface. Mine was a reverse stencil so the Versamark actually ends up on the background. She embossed with clear sparkle embossing powder but I only had regular clear.

After cooling, another layer of Distress Ink is blended on the rainbow which darkens where the stencil covered.

I did my original rainbow with lighter colors and the ending one with brighter colors to make the distinction even more apparent. I finished off with stacked diecuts.

After finishing the lessons I had parts left over so I used them to create a bonus card.

One more day of class - I'd better go get busy.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 4:49 PM PDT

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Again, this post will be a lot of lettering - a new-to-me font, followed by a Bible journaling page using it.

On day one, the challenge was to letter the assigned words in the new font:

Note the little eyeballs in the letters.

On day two, for the full alphabet I chose to skip the thickened lines on the lowercase letters:

Day three, we were instructed to letter a few familiar words in the font and to do some double-line doodles:

On to day four where we lettered a scripture. I stayed with the theme of 'eyes' for mine:

I thinkthe eyes on every letter makes them look to busy. You start to see them as just dots instead of eyes.

So, for my Bible journal page I left most of the dots off the lowercase letters, only using a couple here and there:

I got an idea for illustrating this from some clipart online.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 4:04 PM PDT

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Online Card Class - Day 4 - For these lessons we dug out our watercolors. Actually, we had some choices in what we wanted to use for watercoloring supplies. I used my Windsor Newton watercolor paints for some and Distress Inks for others. All the cards were made with watercolor paper.

Kristina taught watercolor blending skills. We created a background and then diecut words from it and mounted over white cardstock.

The letters that were popped out from card one found a new home on black cardstock along with some gold peel-off stickers.

When I was done making these backgrounds, I continued to spritz the craft sheet with water and dab a cardstock into it for a bonus background. This one also got a diecut medallion and a pre-printed vellum.

Debby used watercolors to paint big dots, letting them barely touch to allow the colors to bleed. She shared the concept of turning them into balloons with a figure to hold the strings. I didn't have a figure to stamp so I hand-drew the little cat. I also created this sentiment with three black and one white diecuts stacked up.

Ddd

Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net at 9:32 PM PDT

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