Yeah, I know, I've been way too quiet, procrastinating and doing other stuff. But I've always meant to do more blogging, honest!
One of my friends happened to be the patrol leader for one of the patrols in my scout "squadron" in Toronto, and as usually happens when people find out that I do calligraphy, the question "can you make me one?" pops up. While I don't have a full recollection of how the project got initiated, after conferring briefly with her over its initial conception, she reminded me that she had mentionned that she liked darker colours. Back then, my reaction was "Bingo. I know what I'm doing." On being reminded, it was a "That's right!" moment.
A black-ground design is quite difficult. Not design-wise, as the photos show it to able to give a nice contrast to the colours. No, the difficulty is in finding an appropriate recipient: "Hey! I made you a card!" "How kind of you! Thanks!" BLACK. Yeah, it tends to dampen most smiles... So, when she mentionned that she was quite fond of darker colours, I knew exactly what I was doing.
And as is often the case (and perhaps the reason few projects are like immediately preceding ones? I hope I'm not being too presumptuous), I have a new challenge to deal with. The challenge, this time, is right at the beginning. How do I transfer the pattern, since I can't trace it through a light-box? I initially tried to pin-prick the design through the pattern sheet, but:
a) It took a very long time to get a minimal transfer of design; and
b) the pin-prick transfer was quite a mess.
So, how do we progress?
Maybe using a simple idea that somehow evaded me the first time around: tracing it as an overlay.
That worked quite nicely.
I was quite surprised, though, by the colour scheme. I was expecting a typical matyó pattern, with reds, greens, yellows, blues... Instead, I got pink, purple, and orange. I got to skip one step I usually do with projects, i.e., taking a thin black pen and defining the pattern, since there was no obvious reason to do it on a black ground, but, as the design itself had been pressed into the board (I think I used up an entire pencil with the whole process of sharpen to a point for thin lines--press heavily so the design gets imprinted in the board---lead breaks or gets dulled--sharpen again), as I would edge the design in the appropriate colours, some colour would wander into the neighbouring element unintended. However, it would seem as the patter got coloured in, most of those small touches disappeared under the colour.
One of my main annoyances with working from patterns (I'm not artistic enough/knowledgeable enough to create my own patterns from scratch) is that often, only part of the pattern will have a colour scheme. And with an unfamiliar pattern like this one, after colouring in those elements for which colours were noted, colouring slowed down considerably, as it became a process of looking through my resources, and comparing uncoloured elements with coloured elements, to find matches.
I guess I did a good job of matching the colours, because no-one's told me "that flower's the wrong colour." Before you go "how rude!", this is the pleasure and pain of working with traditional folk designs; on one hand, there is the continuation of an ethnic tradition, of following in the artistic footsteps of generations of embroiderers, of regular folk who embellished their clothing, potteries, walls, etc., with these same elements. On the other hand, there is the fear of not staying true to the colours, or mixing patterns from different regions in the same project. Doing so really does show up, and it really just leads to a jarring image.
Normally, with a white-ground (or, really, any colour other than black, so far) project, I have difficulty figuring out what colour to do the inking. This one was self-evident: my friend tends to wear silver jewelry. And silvered ink would stand out nicely from the black. Which left me with the style of script.
I decided I wanted something ornate, which would be something gothic, but at the same time, gothic scripts can be slow and illegible. Secretary hand is really great in the regard that it has the ornateness of gothic, but as a chancery hand (a script used by clerks, and others who would have to take dictation), it's meant to be written quickly.
The result really turned out nicely. The pattern really stands out nicely from the black ground, and the silver script, while it retains a touch of formal ornateness, its speed gives it a lightness and joy at the same time.
