Calligraphy, Color and Hispanic Heritage Month

Oct 12

Written By Stacey

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

And your girl is desperate, y’all.

I’ve been working on a paid lettering project behind-the-scenes. When I’m in between rounds, I decompress with calligraphy. It’s all about balance, ya know?

But, it’s a little difficult to get to that when you work full time…unless you are willing to do the absolute most. 😂

In times like these, I tend to throw everything into the same pot and see what comes out.

As you know, I’ve been playing with iridescent inks at home. It’s autumn and the colors change…so why not the color of my ink, right?

Well, that’s a rabbit hole, for sure. I think I have bought and ordered a combined total of six inks in the last week.

Meanwhile, in school, we’ve been studying eight Heroes of Hispanic Heritage based on a collaborative poster that I got from Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s a nice brain teaser for beginning of the school year projects since it uses a key to assign color to areas. The heroes are Selena Quintanilla, Juan Herrera, Cesar Chavez, Roberto Clemente, Sonia Sotomayor, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Ellen Ochoa.

Once the students are done their part of the poster, they are to complete a webpage in Adobe Express on one hero of their choice from the poster. It has to include five paragraphs in their own words to explain who they were, five appropriate photos to illustrate their paragraphs in various formats/sizes, three links to helpful information, and one embedded video that supports their information. It’s a good way to be certain all of our new students are onboarded to the program at the start of the year and that all students know how to use the tool for other classes. Should we get hit with another worldwide panic, they can still display their learning.

I have to say, I only knew the history of a few of these figures. So, the project is helping me learn more about their accomplishments and contributions too. It also gives me the opportunity to hear things from predominately eighth grade black and brown students like, “Why do we have to learn this? We’re not going to use it when we graduate.”

To that, I get to shut down complaints with, “Learning about other peoples and culture is one way we get to combat racism in this country…and if they only get one month out of the year, learning about one new person a year is the least you could do.”

Man, I love saying that. 🥰

As for me, since it’s fall-a time of flux for all the colors around us-I’m loving iridescent inks…

You can’t tell me this color doesn’t look like everything that’s right about fall. 😍

Swoon! 😍

So, I put all of that together…

I found this quote by Roberto Clemente, one of the figures from our poster (whose life story is fascinating, by the way):

If you have an opportunity to make things better and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.
~Roberto Clemente

I thought it was beautiful. So, I tried to lay it out one night after practice using a guidesheet, some walnut ink and my light pad. .

Side note: Did you know you could make your own guidesheet using a guideline generator? 🤯

The first time I calligraphed a quote, I pretty much eyeballed it. This time, since there were more words, I wanted to be sure I got it correct.

Let me just say that calligraphy layout ain’t for the faint of heart.

I’m sure there’s a million ways to do it. But, since I haven’t taken any courses on layout yet, and I really wanted to try this out (like…now), I had to wing it. So, I counted all the letters, including spaces in each line and divided it by two to get the midpoint. Then, I started writing the words at the midpoint first on out to the letters on the sides using the guideline to keep the spacing between the lines fairly consistent.

I know, I know…probably not the best way to do it…and likely extremely backwards. But, I’ve lovingly convinced the critic in me to forgive myself this one time.

I’m sure I’ll learn a better way as I go. But this quote was still short enough that this method worked out fine.

Meh. I know I’ll hate it in a month or two when I’ve further refined my flourishes. But for now, I thought it looked pretty cool and I could possibly make some improvements in later iterations.

So, I took it to school and traced it on my lunch break using a smaller light pad I keep in my filing cabinet.

Honestly, without the guidesheet…I felt a little nakey without the lines to keep my letters from bouncing away from each other…

I got to try it twice over my lunch break on some cost-effective watercolor paper from Michael’s using my Luis Creations Soap Ink Stirrer to keep the ink consistent and my Adjustable Hourglass Oblique loaded with a Hunt 22B nib. I made a few changes each time I copied it.

I wish I had more time. Calligraphy is a slow medium and I could have used more time since I was working without a guidesheet. But, all in all, it wasn’t a horrible transfer…and I just love how it shimmers! ❤️