Chinese Calligraphy Notes - Frontspiece

This is the second of the small projects that I mentioned that I was doing.

My friend Nick is interested in studying Chinese Calligraphy and I had a blank notebook with a woven bamboo cover and hand made paper pages which I thought would be a appropriate medium in which to make some notes.


The modern versal is based on a design by Karen Ter Haar.

The script was designed by June Francis.

The script was quite close to Gothic Textura Quadrata. I'd originally started off using the Akim script but it's informality floored me. I am too used to formal scripts, and couldn't get 'casual' enough for it to look good. I need rules!

I think the lettering looks crooked on the scan, but it isn't. It must be the bulk of the pages behind this front page providing some curve.

I cheated something shocking with the lettering - I drew the letter shapes out by hand in pencil before painting them in with a small brush. I wrote out the words using a broad pen and it looked pretty good but June brush painted this script and there are a few lines that are backwards (ie not left to right, up to down) and need to be done using a brush. Given my brush writing experience is limited, I went with the cheat method.

I had a bit of a problem with bleeding with the versal and with the second 'r' in Murray (and the paper is too thin to make corrections). Meisterin Katarina Helene has since told me that I could have used fixative spray to avoid the problem.

Since there is a high possibility that Nick will be painting in various characters and shapes in ink he might have a problem with bleeding as well. He'll have to fix the area of the page with the spray beforehand (of which I forgot to give him a can). Ok, so handmade paper wasn't the best choice, but it looks pretty!

I had wanted to use black acrylic ink to give me shiny black letters, but I found that it bled heaps (and didn't look shiny on the paper anyway). My standard practice ink worked better.

Kit suggested that I emboss the shape of each letter before painting it to prevent bleed but I found on testing that this didn't make any difference.

It might have made a difference with the bleed on the versal, but we didn't think of embossing until after I'd painted it. I did emboss it as an afterthought so the various sections of the letter kind of bulge up, which you can see if you hold the book at an angle.