Tag: art

Letters by Lydia: Faux Calligraphy

lydnas Leave a comment

Welcome back to another post! Today is all about faux calligraphy, so let’s start by explaining what that even is.

Faux calligraphy got its name by, as you might have guessed, being a sort of “fake” form of calligraphy.  Where traditional calligraphy uses a brush pen to get those thin upstrokes and thin downstrokes, faux calligraphy allows you to get the same technique with a regular old pen (or, really, any sort of pencil, marker, etc that creates a standard line).

In this example, the top version is regular calligraphy with a brush pen, while the bottom version is faux calligraphy using a marker with a bullet tip.

So how does this work? It’s actually pretty simple, which is why a lot of people, especially beginners, prefer it over traditional calligraphy.  A lot of beginners also use it as a gateway into traditional calligraphy, because it uses the same principles without requiring the technique involved in using a brush pen.

To start, you can just write whatever word/letter/phrase you have in mind.  This can be in cursive, or in print, whatever you prefer!  The next step is the key: you need to identify all the downstrokes. In the example below, I showed where the downstrokes are on the cursive letter “a”, but if you want a more comprehensive guide, I have a few other blog posts about handlettering basics that should help you out!  Once you identify where all the downstrokes are, you simply make those lines thicker, whether by drawing an outline and filling it in like I did, or by just adding a few extra lines around it.

Find the downstrokes, outline them, and fill them in 🙂
Here’s a little alphabet guide to help if you’re struggling with the downstrokes, too

Once you’ve got the basics down, this another style where there are a lot of fun variations to play around with. I included some of my favorites below, to show that you can do this with cursive or print, vary the thickness of the downstrokes, bring in color, etc. With the “lazy” and “hard” styles, the lazy one is just what you’ve been doing already (it isn’t lazy, it’s just easier than the hard version). The “hard” version is where you kind of map the downstrokes out in your mind ahead of time so that the lines don’t intersect and downstrokes remain solid white. This takes some practice to get the spacing right, which is why I called it the hard version, but it’s definitely not impossible and can be really fun to practice!

I hope you enjoy trying out a new style, or at least learning about it, and for all the umich students out there, have a great spring break!

A Day In Our Lives #17

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,

This week I decided to draw Aphrodite for Valentine’s Day! This semester I have been added to the Arts Ambassadors here at Arts at Michigan and today we had a valentines day event! It was super fun. We make different crafts and had snacks. I love celebrating Valentine’s Day, it is one of my favorite holidays! I decided to draw Aphrodite in pink and red. I am Greek and have always thought that Aphrodite was one of the most interesting Gods or Goddesses. I love her celebration of love and beauty. She is a positive beauty standard for women today, as she is sculpted closer to the real female form, rather than the male gaze “ideal” one. Valentine’s day here on campus is really hard to navigate, especially at the last minute. My partner and I were lucky that we could get a reservation today, only two days prior. Very busy in Ann Arbor!!

See you next week,
Marissa 

A Day In Our Lives #16

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey Guys,
This week I wanted to talk about a bit of what I do on campus to pass my free time. I usually watch a lot of tv shows and cartoons while I crochet and make my artwork for school.  My favorite movie of all time is the Labyrinth starring David Bowie. these little creatures I have drawn are from that film. I think they’re super creepy and fun. I have a lot of fun drawing them. I usually don’t use a variety of bright colors but I really wanted to make them have dimension and look cool. I think that this decision really makes them pop. I usually spend a lot of time also hanging out with my friends and socializing here on campus. I am super excited for my upcoming show this week at the Stamps art Gallery. I have a sculpture going to the show, I hope you all check it out!
See you next week,
marissa 

TOLAROIDS: Favorite shoot

akilian Leave a comment

I’ve been sorting my photos recently and I stumbled across so many pictures from the past that I wanted to share, but this still probably remains my favorite creative shoot. It was for my own exhibition that I curated in 2019 and it featured dance in different transformations. The problem with capturing dance is that a photograph only captures a short snippet, freezes the dancer in one moment, while the entire idea of dance is that it’s continuous. That’s why I used long exposure to capture the continuum and to really show the act of dancing.

If you hover over the images you can see what settings I used, just if you’re curious 🙂 I am working on editing some new photos so there should be some new exciting content soon.

 

 

 

 

 

With any questions/comments/concerns you can find me at:

email: akilian@umich.edu

Instagram: akilian,jpg

A Day In Our Lives #15

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,

I found my apple pencil! This week I am including another art piece that took longer to work on. Two of my posts so far have featured dinosaurs because I am extremely interested in them! I created this art piece first by drawing out the perspective lines on paper, and then I took a photo of the drawing on my phone. I sent the image to my iPad and colored it in a monochrome grey palette. I really wanted to focus on perspective and lighting in this drawing. I like how the energy of this drawing turned out.

A little update about campus life, I went to the snowball fight on the Diag with my friends this week! I encourage you all to attend cute events like this because it was a really cool and really made me feel like I was a part of the UofM community.

See you next week!

Marissa

 

 

Letters by Lydia: Sometimes it Doesn’t Work

lydnas 1 Comment

Welcome back to Letters by Lydia! Hopefully everyone was able to stay safe and warm in the snow, or maybe even go out and build a snowman 🙂

Today I want to talk about all the times–and trust me, there are many–that lettering ideas and techniques don’t work out.  A lot of times in the art community, especially on social media, we only see the work that people are super proud of: work that’s polished, high quality, creative, unique, and so on. Because of this, it can be really easy to fall into the trap of feeling like your work isn’t good enough, or that everyone else is much more talented. That said, I have noticed lately that people on social media seem to be getting a little more vocal about the importance of the process. Bad art is just as important as good art, because it helps you learn and grow as an artist. If your art was perfect all the time, there would be no room for experimentation, doodling, mistakes, and most importantly, fun!

I’m sure none of this is news to most of you, but I wanted to share an example of some lettering I did today that I couldn’t quite figure out. I wanted to try a new lettering style where it looks like letters someone wrote with their finger in the snow, which ended up being much harder than I anticipated.

After consulting an overwhelming number of google images, my first attempt landed me with this:

When I first did this, I wasn’t in love with, but with some distance I can honestly say this might’ve been my best attempt.  I chalk it up to beginner’s luck, though, because I could not for the life of me produce this kind of style again.  In hindsight, I think the key was only using two colors, because this was the only attempt where I limited my color palette that much.

My next attempt I’m actually super proud of and think looks pretty realistic. The issue? It took forever, so it didn’t feel reasonable to try and do a whole word in this style. My original idea was also to have this as a type of style, not a kind of one-time piece that would be difficult to recreate.  In any case, this is what I ended up with here:

After this, I started trying whole words, and played around with using the colors in different ways, different textures, and different thicknesses.  I don’t dislike any of these, but I don’t think any of them read quite as I wanted them to–they look like pretty snow-themed pieces, but not necessarily like someone was writing in the snow, unless you’re looking at them with that style in mind.

Of course, in this example of things not working out, I still generally liked the end results, they just weren’t what I had in mind originally.  That said, I can’t tell you the number of times I try things that end up looking absolutely terrible, and I can definitely start sharing that stuff too! But I thought it was important to show that there’s also this middle ground where the work you produce is still good, it just doesn’t align with the vision you had, because this also allows for artistic experimentation and learning new styles and techniques.

This is a style I plan to experiment with a bit more and see if it’s something I can refine, but even if it isn’t, I had fun playing around with something new!

I hope you enjoyed reading, and stay safe out there in the snow!