Finding Fonts on the Computer - M2 Chpt1

I really enjoyed the first two activities in this chapter and found it a bit hard to put them on one side, My printer, an A3 Canon Pixma is a truly reliable and uncomplaining companion, which is unusual in a printer,  so it was a bit tempting to try and put all sorts of papers through it. In the end I decided it was time to move on and get on with the third activity.

Trying out new fonts

The first thing I did was to downloads lots of free fonts from an online website.

 I whittled these down to a smaller number, and tried out the details with two fonts

 Lemon Tuesday (above) and C'MON NEAR (below)

I used all the new fonts in activities 1 and 2 aiming to find the right font to go with my chosen bit of text. This was harder than it seemed and certainly worked better in some examples than others.

Getting to grips with the Printer

As I said I am fortunate to have a printer with whom I maintain an excellent working relationship and only once or twice really pushed it to chewing up paper. Brown paper of all things, anyway....

Printing over photographs

Then trying a colour over a greyscale picture. I had to put this through the printer twice and it worked rather well with a slight ghosting on the script

Printing on wrapping paper

I'd definitely do this again with a wider selection of papers, so I'll keep a lookout for ones with a matt surface

Brown paper didn't really do it for me, but the script was good

I then moved on to tissue paper which was really worth trying out and prob the most rewarding. First try says it all, but it went through the printer so well I was  inspired to try more

Then I moved on to colourwash papers, some better than others; that is, some washes were better than others  and some font choices were more suitable than others.

Moving on to old maps. I liked the potential with this. First one I papered over with white tissue, the second with a pale orange. I remember now trying to double print on maps caused a scrap with the canon. I found an old road map of Holland, of all places.

Finally I started to try out various ideas that had been floating around.

Using watercolour paper, with masking tape and wiped off acrylic I tried this first on a small area of paper,  and although the text was out of kilter in general I liked the effect.

I went on to do a larger brown piece that looked very 'western'. I had to go through all the fonts for something appropriate

Then I worked the technique again using cerulean mixed with lemon yellow in various proportions and then rubbed off quickly

Finally I put iridescent medium in with the acrylic, used the same colours as above and then pushed bubble wrap onto the surface once I'd wiped off the excess. I used a very conversational font with this. Not sure if the iridescent medium is all really clear from the photo, but you can see a bit of a shine.

Activity 2 Topsy Turvy printing

It took me a few goes to get to grips putting the paper through the printer the right way to get a proper double printing. As before some fonts, some texts, some text placing worked better than others, but I got one or two really good pieces out of this exercise.

Printing twice on the same sheet.

I started with some simple large text:

Putting green leaves through a third time with text to the right margin

Horizontal and vertical printing. Summer days wasn't so successful

but 'cat nap' worked well, orange/yellow first

I tired printing twice on map paper, but it skewed a bit going through the printer (without the tissue on the surface to grip maybe). I printed the images first then the text.

Then double printed on colourwash paper. This was quite successful.

I tried double printing then working over with water colour - but of course the print ran,

Working was resist crayon over the text was a little more successful.

Working text three times through the printer

I had a couple of real successes with this

Using Lemon Tuesday font  as a landscape base in pale blue, and a portrait text in mid blue, finally C'MON NEAR font over everything in dark blue

All portrait in 'Eagle' font for "It's all a deep end out there", orange on the base, then brown, finally dark blue. One of my favourites, it has the look of an old manuscript to it

Working some Milton out of my system, not used since my A level. This was printed four times, very carefully aligning the text to the paper, although I realised afterwards I could have achieved the same effect by changing the colour of the font on the same page. Pale blue base, mid and dark blue and green subsequent layers.

Finally printing on water colour paper that had been colour washed then covered with clingfilm. Printing in a conversational text in three layers, orange first, then brown , finally dark brown.

I didn't try tissue paper with this exercise as I felt the paper might start to come loose after multiple printing and fracture in the printer. I also contemplated using pastel and water colour resist as a base but was concerned about crayon or pastel coming off on the roller.

Activity 3

Collecting words and letters for inspiration

I spend a lot of my working life looking into images for the starting point of TV programs. This involves a lot of organised searching online and filing images carefully so they can be formatted into documents that form the basis for the way a set/series looks. Mood boards come much later. However for this activity I felt that 'mood boards' were maybe the right start. I'm not sure if that was right. I started off looking at printed words from various letters, postcards etc before looking into more creative calligraphy / art words. I was then sidetracked by lettering and put some lettering mood boards together. I found images from various places but absolutely loved a) knitted letters; b) printers letters all arranged in a box with the obvious signs of use on them.

Postcards and printed text

More art based postcards and printed text, plus embroidered lettering

Some details

Based on arabic calligraphy ?? 

Japanese calligraphy, abstract, could be hiragana - but I can't read it

Lettering, the second was still wet with glue when I photographed it, and came out looking milky so here's the original layout.

Activity 2.1.4
Collecting Images for future use. I have been out with my camera collecting one or two pictures and have found lots online and in the post that I'm hoping to use in future chapters.