Tag Archives: calligraphy

It looks like writing, but we can’t quite read it – – –

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What does it say in the background??!!

I’m baaaaa-aack.

The last two weeks have been filled with family visitors, young and old, hailing from near and far. In the course of hosting, we got to play tourist, and have – over the last ten days – visited the San Antonio Zoo, the DoSeum, The Witte Museum, the Briscoe Museum of Western Art (fantastic exhibit of Warhol and Schenk), the San Antonio Art League and Museum (yay!), the downtown Public Library and its BookCellar, the Twig Bookshop and the Pearl, and the Nimitz/Pacific War Museum in Fredericksburg.

We stopped for Fredericksburg peaches during our Hill Country excursion – yum.

Lucky us to have families that love art and books!I Oh, yeah, and food – here’s a shout-out to Twin Sisters where we ate breakfast every morning this past week!

And now it’s time for a new art diversion.

This afternoon I got back to the studio, and in preparation for my Wax & Words workshop this Sunday and Monday, I did a little video tutorial on Asemic Writing that I thought you might enjoy. It’s a fun exercise in line and design and even though I’m a lefty, I think you can get the idea…

Asemic writing for collage and design from Lyn Belisle on Vimeo.

I plan to do my next eBook on calligraphic markmaking and stamped and stenciled lettering in combination with beeswax layers – stay tuned. And thanks for reading SHARDS.

Second Session: WAX & WORDS on Monday, June 25

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I’ve added a second section of Wax & Words on Monday, June 25th from 1-4 at the Semmes Studio, San Antonio Art League, for those of you who couldn’t get in the first one. Thank you all for your quick response.

The second session will have the same agenda as the first – if you would like to register, please go to this link and scroll to the bottom of the page. There is a limit of eight participants. We will have fun!

Description:

This three-hour workshop taught by Lyn Belisle introduces you to the concept of asemic writing as a component of evocative encaustic collage. Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content,” or “without the smallest unit of meaning.” With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret.

We will explore mark-making with all kinds of tools, including sticks, stamps, and sprayed walnut ink over stencils. Areas of the artwork will be isolated, then covered with thin layers of beeswax to add translucency to the mystery of the marks.  The resulting work, elegant and timeless, will be matted for display and discussion.

All materials are provided, including

  • Drawing paper
  • Sticks and ink
  • Letter Stamps
  • Walnut ink stencils
  • Graphite pencil
  • Encaustic wax and brushes
  • Gallery mats
  • Gold leaf . . .and more
Hope to see you there!

 

Workshop time: WAX & WORDS

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A quick note . . Just wanted to let SHARDS readers know that I’m offering a workshop on Sunday, June 24th at the newly refurbished Semmes Studio on the grounds of the San Antonio Art League & Museum. I’m so excited to be teaching again, especially since this will be the first workshop since the new studio has been upgraded with a skylight and bathroom!

You can read about the workshop, WAX & WORDS, by clicking on the image, below. It’s a great way for beginners to learn about mark-making and encaustic techniques.

Hopefully, this will be the first of many creative workshops there. Here’s another link for details.

A portion of the tuition will go to the Art League – it’s a 501(c)(3) – and by the way, it’s membership time if you’d like to join. Art League members always get discounts in my workshops! Join here.

PS – and yes, the Semmes Studio is air-conditioned!

Wax and Words – no worries, everything worked!

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After a month away from teaching workshops, I was a little fearful about starting off the new sessions with something I hadn’t done before, a class called Words and Wax. It was inspired by some of Nancy Crawford‘s beautiful Love and Gratitude encaustic series pieces.

Nancy Crawford, 4x4", Even More Love and Gratitude

Nancy Crawford, 4×4″, Even More Love and Gratitude

I wanted to emphasize the mark-making within the words, so I designed a four-layer process that involved ink, stencils, graphite and stamping as the initial approach,followed by the addition of beeswax, and incising into that. The results were wonderful, thoughtful, accidental but purposeful. Please see what the students did in the video below.

I’m happy to share with you the general outline of the class in case you want to play around with this idea. You can find the steps here.

Postscript:

Ironically, just as I was writing this post about words, I received some sad news about the death of an old friend and consummate man of words, Professor John Igo. John was a San Antonio educator, writer, artist, photographer, producer, and critic. He kept us all on the straight and narrow path with our word usage in his delightful radio program called Grammar Gripes.

John leaves a legacy that is wide and deep across the arts and letters community – he will be greatly missed.

John Igo

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Bonnie, Akim & me, the (ahem) calligrapher

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Lefties like me are challenged in many ways, but especially in the fine art of calligraphy. I’d always envied people who could take a simple work like “bread” and elevate it to super-star status with illuminated swashes. But thanks to my friend Bonnie Houser, I can now write like a calligrapher! And I’m getting better at it – AND it’s fun!

Some of you may know Bonnie as the owner of Dry Comal Creek Vineyards and Winery and some of you may know her through her art work, She’s a great friend and teacher to a lot of people. Lesta Frank and I asked Bonnie to give us a quick calligraphy lesson on an alphabet called AKIM. It was “invented” by German artist, sculptor and musician Hans-Joachim Burgert, who said, “The 10spiritual material is the simple line. . .the line is a medium of free graphic discipline.”  Because this is a monolinear alphabet (no chiseled shading), anyone, even left-handed people, can do it well.

It was amazing how quickly we picked it up with Bonnie’s help. And the great thing is that there are as many personal variations of the Akim hand as their are writers. If you do a web search, you will see this for yourself. Take a look at some of the work we did with Bonnie, then give it a try!

 

Arts, letters & amber – a studio visit

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Carolyn Eastman Cazares is a Woman of Letters – Hebrew letters. She fell in love with the letterforms over a decade ago and paints them in layered compositions that transcend translation. I visited Carolyn at her Studio on the edge of the Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio, and I was astounded with the diversity and passion in her work. When she falls in love with something – Hebrew letters, chunks of amber, faces that compel her, she is prolific in her explorations. Her amber and copper wire jewelry is lyrical – she says that amber is a combination of “liquid sunshine and ancient wisdom.”

She also makes a great chocolate gluten-free cake (and gave me the recipe). We talked for over an hour about creativity, relationships and art, and what inspires us, and we found a lot of common ground. If you’ve visited my house and my studio, you can see from the photos that Carolyn and I share a lot of the same kinds of “artists’ stuff”! Thanks for the visit, Carolyn – I will be back!