Something about Hungarians and Peppers...

Hot on the tails of "Switcheroo" was another card. Actually, both were being coloured at the same time, which probably explains the resemblance in method.

Two months after making my first card, I went to Montreal to visit some friends, and while I was there, I showed one its photo. She asked for one, so a few months later, when the time came, I started working on it. At this point, I hadn't quite figured out how to modify the patterns I had so they didn't hog all the space on the page. This is why these two particular cards have such big designs (Switheroo is the other one). Around this time I also bought myself a portfolio, so I could protect the sheets while I worked on them (and avoid bending the corners). Needless to say, I felt like I was becoming a true artist (of course, that's absolute nonsense).

Anyway...

One of my resources where I get the designs from has a sheet, showing 5 different "sorminta", or "row patterns". These are designs that would often be embroidered along the edge of a tableloth, sheet, pillowcase, etc. And their purpose happens to make them easily adaptable for my own purposes, with very little mucking of the design. If you've been reading the blog from the start (or have read the older posts), you'll recall I stated that embroidery and design from Kalocsa ("Kalocsai") is very popular, both in Hungary and internationally. (If this is the first time you read that statement, you'll recall I said it the next time I say it.) As a result, this sheet had two examples of Kalocsai sorminta. Nice colourful flowers, as usual, but with, um, two unusual details. One sorminta had a head of wheat, and the other had peppers. First reaction is something along the lines of "what are those doing there?" But, of course, the flowers, wheat, and peppers have a meaning (red peppers represent strength and vigor. And if you've ever eaten hot Hungarian paprika, you know why).

Around this time it comes to my mind that the staff and students at the schools I work must think I'm really weird for drawing flowers all the time.

The greeting is as usual in Hungarian, and is a traditional greeting sung throughout the Hungarian scout community for someone's birthday. It's another one of the funny-indented cards, but from the looks of it, this one was done on purpose. The text, I find now, is remarkably compact. What I had done, was instead of spacing each line out, was simply stack them on top of each other, meaning that now, there's a huge block of space above and below the writing. Spacing it out (even if only by x-height [the height of the majority of letters]) would have spread out the text a little more, and made it more legible. An excellent example of how spacing matters is between the first and second lines, where no less than three times is there a conflict between ascenders (l and h on the second line) and descenders (y, g, and p on the first lines). Inserting an x-height space, in addition to the space required for ascenders and descenders, would have prevented such a conflict. The script is a form of uncial (I think it's half-uncial), which was prevalent from the 3rd to the 6th century.

And of course, there's a typo.