Archive for February, 2008

Peter Thorton: Workshop Inspired and Based on the Letters of Adolf Bernd

May 3–4, 2008

The desire to decorate lies within us all and for over 1500 years the letter has served us well. Beginning as a signpost to the reader it quickly became an object of beauty as an end in itself.

The letter ‘L’ by Adolph Bernd
The letter ‘L’ by Adolf Bernd.

Using the wonderful letters of Adolf Bernd (1909–1994) for inspiration and as a starting point, we shall examine 3 areas of his (and our) major interests.

a. the backgrounds
b. the letterforms
c. the colour harmonies and integration

In this workshop, for all levels of ability, we shall begin with simple exercises in colour unity and contrasts on shapes, patterns and themes of Adolf Bernd’s (and our own) choices which will lead to the decoration of both historic and contemporary letters.

A feature of the class will be to take/use colours from ‘nature’ (see material list) and transfer these onto our letters and backgrounds.

Example of student work
Example of student work from a previous workshops.

Material list:

  • Good quality watercolors
    • two reds (a crimson red and an orange red)
    • two blues (a violet blue and a cool/yellow blue)
    • two yellows (an orange yellow and a cool yellow)
  • good medium weight watercolor paper
  • fine pointed brushes sizes 2, 4, and 6
  • palette (a white plate will work)
  • pencil
  • eraser
  • paper towels

Two sheets of 25 x 40 inch Arches MBM Ingres paper will be provided for a materials fee of $7.20.

    Also…

    • any natural object (or photo would work) of flower, feather, vegetable, leaf, bark stone, etc.
    • drawing board optional

    Example of student work - the letter ‘P’
    Example of student work from a previous workshops.

    Workshop Registration Form
    Registration form and payment must be sent to Lily Hoy by April 19.
    Workshop fee: $100 Guild Members / $120 Non-members.

    Workshop will be held Room 227, Margaret Morrison Hall, Carnegie Mellon University (campus map).

    Garden Stone for Heart Association

    Sharing what we do and create can be inspiring and helpful. So here is an open invitation to any guild member who would like to post a tutorial, share something you are working on, write a class review or share a gallery or museum viewing. Email me your write-up along with pictures and I will post it ASAP. Thank you, Toni Kelly

    The following was sent in by Nadine.

    Stone“Sending pics of the concrete heart garden stone I
    finished this weekend, which will be one of 12
    auctioned off at the American Heart Assn. Heart Ball
    on February 9. This is not all what I had planned when
    I was first asked to do this. I was going to do
    something with flowers, but decided to let the
    calligraphy be the “star”. The background was a happy
    mistake - I tried brushing on the blue acrylic, didn’t
    like how it looked and started dabbing with a paper
    towel, ending up with a cloudy sky backdrop. The
    surface was smooth enough that I could write with a
    nib.

    Nadine in Uniontown PA”

    stone2stone3stone4