Goldfish, Q. Cassetti, Pen and Ink, 2008Yesterday was restful. There was swimming, pizza making, drawing and new revelations. I needed a day or two to make my brain stop…(I cannot sing the praises of clear thinking after a nap…so much so I would love to have an hour everyday as it has been producing eureka moments). Did a little drawing…lubki style and was reflecting on an approach I was working with two years ago with the childrens book project I did sketches with the Lewins (see goldfish to the side).

I am going to do some drawings/ constructions along this line as its an idea worth developing and offers me a few more tricks. After thinking about that….I thought about how Arnold Bank would teach us calligraphic “hands”. There was a distinct process to test one’s knowledge and mastery/design with these letterforms.

We would learn the letterforms from the measure and scale of the letters based on the pen or tool width, and stroke. We would create letter necklaces with pen exercises to drive consistency and accurate line and letterspacing. Once we had the letterforms and variations internalized, we had to create a large, medium and small application of single letters, phrases/mottos, with and without illustration. We also had to do a small book/or document with more than 20 lines of text size lettering. It took between 4-6 months just to do this work…Poppy, Q. Cassetti, Pen and Ink, 2008but once it was done, it was understood, committed to memory and hand, integrated into one’s personal design approach. If we took this discipline and applied it to the various illustration “hands” or styles—working small, medium and large, portraits, landscapes, animals, likenesses, patterns =then this approach is best integrated into my thinking.

So, this simple, graphic approach is something I am going to pick up the pen and work up some illustrations in this mode. Positive and negative, big fields of flat color. Keeping it linear and shapes. Maybe not matching up…Worth taking this around the block. I did something for the Cayuga Blue Notes and though its okay, I am not loving it. I am liking this applied to the Bass Box, Guitar, Slide Guitar and Harmonica…Could feel fresh and difference. We’ll see.