Calligraphy Gallery detail, The Eleventh Hour The Eleventh Hour, 9 x 14", ink, watercolor and pencils on paper, 1996 Calligraphy is a way for me to blend my illustrations with the type that they are meant to go with. Initial caps, book or page titles drawn with similar styles as the illustrations they complement, or styles from the same period as the illustrations, serve to bind together a page's design more than if they were separate elements. This illustration above is from a college illustration project for a children's activity game, combining a short story and mystery that kids can play along with using the masks contained in the package. The illustration is meant to be used on both the cover of the book that comes with the game, as well as the game box cover, which would have clear sections to show the masks in the game box where the animals' faces depicted in the illustration are shown.The lid of the box would lift up to show the masks that the children would use to act out the parts of the characters in the game's book. I used watercolors and pencils to draft the basic shapes of the image as well as the portions of the animal faces. The calligraphy was drawn with a metal poster brush on rough watercolor paper to make a rough edge on the letterforms that went with the mystery theme, but with an easy-to-read letter shape to make the title easier to read and less spooky to children than a more gothic/blackletter character shape. The Hobbit, 18 x 28", ink & gouache on paper, 1996 detail, The Hobbit This page above was my senior project in calligraphy/letterpress class in college. Besides the calligraphy itself, I researched a specific period of Irish clerical manuscripts and used enlargments from dozens of slides to plan an alphabet. After planning the alphabet, I researched the drawing styles used in the initial caps and page decorations, and then practiced writing paragraphs in the alphabet I had planned, to get a sense of the alphabet's rhythm and style. Besides the style, I carefully chose paper to match the same texture as scraped parchment, and I mixed my own inks using alcohol, water and specific dyes and chemicals. Marylander of the Year Award , 9 x 14", ink, on paper, 1996 detail, Marylander of the Year Award This page also had an historical feel to it that needed to be researched, in this case the calligraphy of British court clerks during the 16th century. Like the Hobbit project, I planned out an alphabet using slides of documents from the period I was illustrating, and practiced the alphabet on paragraphs over a period of a few weeks. The page was commissioned by the Maryland Colonial Society as a gift to Cardinal William Keeler of Maryland for their Marylander of the Year award.