November 11: doing drills

Hi everyone! This is my first time participating in live session and I'm a bit anxious about deadlines. I spend most of my day around cute little guy and at night I put on my batsuit, grab some brushpens and do calligraphy. Matt did a great job compiling this course so I'm gonna take all I can from it :)

Last two evenings I practiced i, e and o with my old pens that are not sharp and sometimes run out of ink but I still really enjoyed them. Stay tuned for the updates!

For the love of George - image 1 - student project

November 29: exploring tools

Today the finding of the day is marker paper, which helped me to achieve desired contrast and (that's important) doesn't ruin my brushpens' tips. Plus I like how ink behaves on glossy paper. While awaiting Zebras and other pens from an e-shop I'm still using Faber-Castell artistic pens.

For the love of George - image 2 - student project

After some practice with single characters and minimum I decided to go further and vary as many parameters of writing as I only could think of.

For the love of George - image 3 - student project

For the love of George - image 4 - student project

For the love of George - image 5 - student project

For the love of George - image 6 - student project

Nothing to breathe is my favourite so far and I'm going to base my finished piece on that style. I'll write my husband's name, George. See you soon when I'm done with sketches. Any feedback and critique are always welcome! :)

December 1: pencil sketches

Good winter everyone! Still training my muscle memory with basic strokes and letters, but today I want to show some of my sketches. I brainstormed a lot of different options while trying to be focused on inconsistent-baseline-and-xheight style.

For the love of George - image 7 - student project

For the love of George - image 8 - student project

For the love of George - image 9 - student project

Last nine are what I'm going to brush-write. What do you think?

December 3: why haven't I thought about it before?

From the first day of the session I enjoed endless writing the name of my loved one and I knew he would be pleased to see his name beautifully designed. But Matt's post in Discussions made me consider more practical application for it. Now I'm going to make a logo that my hubby (photography enthusiast) could use as signature for his shots. Why haven't I thought about it before?

But it's never too late :) I just needed to add second name, though it came out not so easy to marry it with sketches I already like.

For the love of George - image 10 - student project

Can't wait to upload the brushpen part for your critique guys :) Hope your projects are evolving fast and happily!

December 4: writing with brush

For the love of George - image 11 - student project

For the love of George - image 12 - student project

For the love of George - image 13 - student project

The last one is what I'm going to refine and digitise. Feedback is very much appreciated!

December 5: refining

Scanning > bringing it all together on computer > printing > refining with tracing paper. Usually I prefer refining with tablet to drawing on tracing paper, but this time I went trough all the stages.

For the love of George - image 14 - student project

For the love of George - image 15 - student project

December 6: vector tracing

There were some new tips and tricks, thanks Matt! I love how you handle connection strokes and the whole idea of repeating brush behavior when tracing.

For the love of George - image 16 - student project

Stay tuned to see the final :)

December 7: final

For the love of George - image 17 - student project

For the love of George - image 18 - student project

For the love of George - image 19 - student project

Hubby is happy, I'm really glad that my calligraphy and vectoring skills moved to a new level. Thanks so much Matt!

If you like what I do let's make friends: behance, instagram — and thanks to Matt — dribbble :)

Kate Zavolokina

Designer, letterer, translator, linguist

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