Some Star Wars and Others

Yes, I saw the new Star Wars movie and it was AWESOME. I certainly won’t spoil it, though – this blog is for calligraphy, not spoilers.

As a way of getting myself psyched up, though, I did some Star Wars quotes for practice.

Good old C-3PO. Always with the right outlook on life.

This is such a great line. Never do we hear the word “Jedi” spoken with such venom. As scripts go, I think an excessively flourished Fraktur is ideal for the Emperor.

This took a couple of tries – I did it once and then had to cut that up so I could get the centering right. Getting things properly centered is an interesting challenge in calligraphy. If you’re determined to do it, then you should be ready to do a couple of drafts.

This is the only line from the new movie that I did. Well, that and “I have a bad feeling about this,” but it didn’t really come out the way I wanted. Damn Romans.

There were a few other long-form pieces that I did this week as well:

A request from Mom. She’ll get the original, of course.

 

As a teacher, I wish I had an office to hang this in.

 

Such a perfect joke.

 

If only the attribution looked as good as the quote. Damn.

 

A good time was had by all, I’m sure. One of the nice things about having a break – and having played through most of Fallout 4 – is that I can do more of these.

What I’ve Been Up To

Things have been quiet over here in the last few weeks, mainly for two reasons.

Reason The First: I got Fallout 4. That should pretty much explain everything.

The best things always begin with nuclear annihilation.

I figure once I play though the game a few times, this’ll be less and less of an impact on my calligraphy time. Then again, I also bought – on a friend’s recommendation – Witcher III, so who knows how winter break will shake out.

Reason The Second: My damn, dirty eyes.

Up till a little while ago, my vision was pretty much spot-on. Sure, my right eye was a little weaker than my left, but it was within tolerances. For a few months, though, it was becoming more and more obvious that my little jelly cameras weren’t working the way they should. Case in point:

Take a look at that h in “light.” That really shouldn’t happen, but when one eye decides that it wants to start doubling things up, then that’s what happens. I couldn’t line things up against the guidelines under the paper, and couldn’t be absolutely sure where the pen nib was going. For calligraphy that’s a bad, bad thing.

So I went to the eyeglass shop, got my eyes checked, and got my very first pair of eyeglasses.

I wanted something with a horn-rimmed look, which turns out to be the style of Moral Ambiguity in TV and movies. It was an interesting experience, actually – not only getting eyeglasses for the first time, but doing it all in Japanese.

Now everything is in HD, as my sister puts it, and I can see what I’m doing again. All things being equal, I would rather not have to have them, but that’s where life’s put me at the moment, so I won’t complain. Rather, I’ll slowly get back to doing calligraphy work. The Calligraphy subreddit is doing holiday-themed Words of the Day leading up to Christmas:

Anyway, I’m getting back on the horse, as it were. With Star Wars coming up, I’ll do a few of those this week, and I’ve been building up a bank of ideas and requests. Winter break should be productive. See you there!