Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Galaxy arms Part One

Song of Songs: Timeless love poetry in contemporary calligraphy. 

The vortex design posed many challenges.  How DO you show the arms of a galaxy?  Stars without number, and clouds, gases, black holes, and things we don't even have names for?  It's a little off-topic for a calligraphy design, but I've learned from decades of calligraphic design that to harmonize with the letters on the page, most decorative elements should be done with the same pens and inks.  
The decorative trails between the lines of lettering were mainly made of dots, plus a few stars and new moons and planets.  I experimented with both a random sprinkling, and with some clearly repeating patterns before I found a blend of both that also hinted at the underlying structure of astro-physics. 
Here are the experiments that didn't make it: random swaths of dots, at right, and some repeating patterns below that were too obvious.  Mimicking the texture of text is not simple; it challenges you to find more than letters in your pen.  

(Please overlook my problems with the background tone.) 





 








No comments:

Post a Comment