Cloths of Heaven - W B Yeats in Calligraphy

Commission - Cloths of Heaven - W B Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

It's always nice to work on a commission, especially when it is for a special occasions. This poem, Cloths of Heaven by W B Yeats must be one of my favourites.

The lettering colour choice was to be Aubergine and Plum to fit in with a particular colour scheme. Plum purple, silver and burgundy red, pastel hearts tumble down the page to compliment the lettering wonderfully.

The whole piece was mounted in a single plum mount which really set the whole piece off.

Commissions come to me for many different occasions. This one was for a 20th Wedding Anniversary from a wife to her husband.

Materials:

Fabriano 5, Gouache, Pastels and Silver paint.

Cut Letters Birthday Card

Just a couple of days after my sisters birthday, it happens to be my brother-in-laws. I've been playing around with my cutting machine and just had to experiment with turning calligraphy into a cut letter design....I thought I'd share the results.

I'm finding these cut letters really inspiring and have ideas buzzing around my head, which I will share as they are produced. The idea for these is that I will produce names to order, especially for special occasions.

Cut Letters

From the time before I was even interested in Calligraphy, I have been interested in cut and etched letters, in fact the whole idea of learning lettering was to carve in stone and etch on glass. Somehow, the time taken to learn good letterform was grossly miscalculated and the resulting loss of my centre vision in 1997 then made it an impossibility.
Before loosing my sight however, I did a few pieces where I cut letters from card and mounted these on top of card again, resulting in a sort of relief effect. Again, loosing my sight would make the chances of me turning any future ideas into reality.....until my new toy arrived 2 days ago!

Using a computer programme, which incidentally is becoming a sharp learning curve and more than a little challenging, I can now sent my graphics to a cutter and cut out tiny letters or large ones.....no centre vision needed :o)

I've lots of ideas and they are coming thick and fast! At the moment I am at the playing stage and I know that I cannot rush the learning process, just as with calligraphy. There is no easy way to jump ahead.

These are just trial pieces and there will be more 'proper' work to come, of which I will share on the blog and may even add them to my shop.

I think they look superb and I am well pleased with the results so far.

I hope you like them too. :o)

Poetry Commission

Because of the sheer length of this poem and the constraints of the finished size brief, it was impossible to write the whole thing out in calligraphy not to mention the budget, I had to use calligraphy and typeface combined.

I gave the client the choice of two finishes.....both contemporary. The first was a painted border with gold strands running through it.....

The second had pastel squares tumbling through the words from the top to the bottom. It was no great surprise that this is the one the client chose as it was my favourite too......

The poem by Rudyard Kipling - The Thousandth Man, can be read here:

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