Kilian Capitals

 I have long loved the look of this lettering style, and before we came away I discovered a short online course about them. So, I signed up and during our first week here have managed to sit down and watch the lessons and do a bit of practice. Such fun!

The view from my 'studio' desk.

I did lots of practice of individual letter from groups and letters.  It is funny how after years of writing, your hand wants to do certain things when forming a letter, and yet this style forces you to do different signs and go in different directions. I had to catch myself quite a bit and slow down and focus on doing what felt a bit unnatural.

One of the things I like most is how he knits and weaves letters; and allows them to cross over into other letters alongside, above and below.

Lots of notes to self!

I then began practising layouts for a phrase Peace is Every Step. For the life of me, I couldn't remember to not make the second bowl of the S equal to the first one - it should stop well before, making the letter quite top heavy.

The advice is to do the layout in pencil first, to work out your ligatures and spacing and placement; and then go on to do the proper lettering. I think in time you could probably commit in one fell swoop - but in these early days it is good to have the opportunity to rub out and try again as the planning of the letter placement takes a bit.

I think I like the last one best - where I have made EVERY a bit bigger, but need to move the E to the left to balance things out a bit.

And then I distracted myself with this pile of scraps I found I had left here last time.

Clearly they had bookmarks written all over them! Just waiting for me to transform them.

So I had a play around which gave me inordinate pleasure, and made four bookmarks!

I will get back to some more quotes and layouts and practice, but this was fun to do.