more about painting the letters

My friend Karin lives in Ethiopia. Amharic is the national language of Ethiopia. I remember when she was planning to go there and trying to learn the language. Depending on where you read about it, there are over 250 letters! Some say over 400! As I understand it, there is a different symbol for each syllable. But that is as far as I can tell you. For this piece I am working on, I used an English/Amharic site on the web.
If you are interested in knowing a bit about Amharic, there is a lot of information about the language at this website, including some audio clips.

Anyway, here is a bit more about how I did the lettering. I used this technique for both the Amharic and the English because of the font.

I trimmed away the top and bottom of the letters, leaving them attached in the centre.

Then I traced round the letters.

As you can see, there are gaps where the attachments were. I drew in the missing sections.

And then painted them with a small paint brush using Setacolour Opaque Black.

They look fuzzy because this is a very close image, they don't look so fuzzy even when you are standing close to the work.

So, some translations:

Ethiopia

1960

Roma (Rome)

And the clue of the subject matter:

Abebe Bilika

If you know much about sports or Olympic history, you might know the occasion this work will be celebrating! Especially with the word 'running' which is above and the clue from yesterday and in the above photo about footprints.

But you will need to wait til Monday for more details!

ideas and trials

I showed you some Amharic lettering yesterday. Before I got to that stage, I trialled some ideas. I thought I could use letters cut out and placed on the surface with stamping over top...the letters being a resist allowing the void to become the letter.

So, some ideas:

patterns didn't seem to work, but the 'blank' stamp did.

However, when I tried this for real over some foot prints using a larger blank stamp, I ran in to all sorts of problems.

the cut outs were not within the space of the stamped square and then the cut out foot prints stuck to the block so well that I had to scrub them off and recut more foot prints.

So, plan B.
Paint the letters. However, I really wanted to use the font for the Amharic. I had tried to draw letters with limited success, so I really needed the font.
Okay, I could have got out the light box, but surface space is at a premium at present and I didn't feel I had time to mess about with it. I usually use the ironing board for it, as it is a good height. But that was serving as my printing table.

So, I cut round each word, leaving connections between letters.

Like this year date. These numbers were large, so worked really well.

Then I tried colouring in with a permanent marker...a small nib because I knew most of the words I wanted were quite small.

I didn't like the result, so the next step was painting in the letters. Slow, but the cricket was gripping, so that was alright.

The cutting on the Amharic words was a bit more fiddly. Especially some of the smaller sized words.

But I got a result I liked.

And from there I proceeded with the plan.

How is your Amharic?

The current project has been a bit difficult to get going. I had a good idea, but just couldn't work out how to make it work together with other information I needed to include.
Then the Special Advisor to Design (A Certain Young Man)came by and asked me about it. And as I explained it, I realised the bit I was keen on was the bit that was keeping everything from working.

So, now I am getting somewhere.

But for now, I leave you with some Amharic which I have painted.

What wonderfully pictorial letters!

ALAW - Burnt Letters presented

Before the end of 2014, I finished the Presentation for the second set of letters I did for A Letter A Week. As you may recall, I used a soldering iron as a wood burning tool, but onto British Calico. The letters were from a book with Celtic designs.

I decided to create a sort of swatch book with the Burnt Letters.

I kind of like the look of the pages swirled round like that. The burnt edges make their own pattern.

I stitched a bead between each letter on the upper left to hold them together.

They could be flicked through as well.

December days - 17 and the final ALAW Burnt Letters

Second ALAW set for 2014 v-z
At last caught up with the Burnt Letters.

And the Burnt Letters up close...

info about the technique and concept here and here.

And now to do the presentation is left. I do have an idea of sorts.

But for now, here are all the Burnt Letters together.

ALAW - Burnt Letters and December days - 4

Second ALAW set for 2014 q-u
Still catching up the Burnt Letters

And the Burnt Letters up close...

info about the technique and concept here.

ALAW - Burnt Letters

Second ALAW set for 2014 m-p
Still catching up the Burnt Letters

And the Burnt Letters up close...

info about the technique and concept here.

ALAW - Burnt Letters

Second ALAW set for 2014 i-l
Catching up the Burnt Letters

And the Burnt Letters up close...

info about the technique and concept here.

September Journal Quilt

Yesterday I was able to get back to the letter journal quilt I started the other day.

I am calling it S is for Snowdrop. The snowdrop is special to us because it is similar to our surname. I had a snowdrop brooch my MIL gave me one time but I haven't seen it for ages. I have a feeling it came off of my coat one time several years ago.

I was quite surprised at how easy it was to thread paint the flower on the metallic. But possibly it didn't shred because I had fused the silver fabric to another fabric. The difficult thing was that the slight puckering doesn't press out well. Of course the camera picks shows them up a lot more than is visible when you look at it in person.

I used felt again for the wadding. I do like the weight and feel of it, but this acrylic craft felt is a bit hard on needles because it sort of goes 'punch, punch'.

It is not so easy to see, but I stitched white translucent beads onto the middle portion of the S using a light green thread. It helps to bring the colours of the flower over to the Blue letter.

ALAW - Burnt Letters

Second ALAW set for 2014 e-h
Catching up the Burnt Letters

And the Burnt Letters up close...

I trace the letters onto the fabric using my lightbox. If I did this again, I wouldn't cut all the squares of fabric first because sometimes it gets pretty hot when you are burning a section near the edge. Or perhaps if I centred the letter, there would be less problem, but I am considering doing something in the open spaces.

You have to also take into account that the just burnt section of fabric will be HOT. So when you reposition where you are holding it you have to be careful not to touch the section you just did. It cools fast, but you don't want to touch it straight away.