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| ©Jane Farr Calligraphy & Design LLC |
I will show you our 2010 Christmas card next week, but this is our family Christmas card from 2008. The front (above) was inspired by Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts' Liberty's Light piece which you can see by clicking
here. (Maria and Rick our the founders of
Zentangle.)
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| ©Jane Farr Calligraphy & Design LLC |
This is the inside. For years, all four of us have signed our Christmas card. Not this year. The kids were home at Thanksgiving, but I wasn't even close to having our Christmas card designed and ready for signing at that time.
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| ©Jane Farr Calligraphy & Design LLC |
This was the front of our 2005 Christmas card. Those compound strokes make me cringe now, but I was thrilled with it back then. haha. I was in full mandala mania mode after my guild's workshop with Pat Blair. :) (and you regular readers know I'm still a mandala maniac!)
This is the lovely Erika Woods. She is one of the pillars of the
Calligraphy Guild of Indiana. Erika is a gifted artist, calligrapher, teacher and is a champion for the lettering arts. She was named the
Indianapolis Art Center's Faculty of the Year for 2010. As a celebration of that award, the IAC wanted to honor Erika with a special exhibit of her work.
It is a wonderful exhibit! If you are in the Indianapolis area anytime between now and January 30th - treat yourself - go see it!
Gallery Hours are:
Monday through Friday: 9am - 10pm
Saturday: 9am - 6pm
Sunday: Noon - 6pm
The Indianapolis Art Center is located at 67th Street and College Avenue (in Broadripple).
Congratulations Erika!
Visit Erika's website
here.
Erika is also one of the talented artists of ArtSplash in the Arts & Design District of Carmel.
Visit the ArtSplash website
here.
Go put some flourish in your Friday!
As you may know, I love to make the circular designs that I learned in my guild's 2005 workshop with Pat Blair. I call them mandalas. I think I enjoy making them so much because the design possibilities are endless. I decided to keep a record of all the different elements I could incorporate into my mandalas. Keeping a record like this is something I learned from Barbara Close. I've taken two, separate workshops from her. Although the workshops were very different from one another, each time she had us keep a record of the techniques or variations we were learning. If only I would do this record keeping more often, because my memory is like Swiss cheese! I quickly filled the page with different ideas, and I could easily do more - and should!
I normally do mandalas that start in the center, and then I pull the strokes out toward the edge - like spokes on a wheel. These mandalas are different, and I think I will start calling them wreaths instead. I would like to do some very large. These are only 4 inch squares.
I have uploaded more mandalas and wreaths - and even some squares - over at Flickr. You can check them out here.
This is the front of a little card I sent to Master Penman Bill Lilly. The paper was a bit too textured for my liking. My thoughtful husband had contacted Mr. Lilly about purchasing his book and DVD on Engrosser's Script in order to give them to me as a surprise. Mr. Lilly is a graduate of the Zanerian College of Penmanship where he studied under E.A. Lupfer. My husband very much enjoyed his conversations with Bill, and he'd like to meet Bill (me too!) the next time we go to visit family in Ohio. You can visit Bill Lilly's blog here. 
Is it Friday already?! The week flew by for me. I love, love, love to make these mandalas. I have a step-by-step mandala picture tutorial at Flickr. You can view it here. This particular mandala was made for an exchange. The quote is by Jean Paul Richter and says, "Cheerfulness, like spring, opens all the blossoms of the inward man."
This flourish is based on one I saw on page 29 of The Universal Penman. I hope everyone has a great weekend!!
