Meeting Minutes 9 March 2021
20 present
Ruling Pen with Bister Inks- Lonnie Watts
Welcome & Announcements:
**We are still planning on hosting our guild retreat om October at the Hideaway. Details will be forthcoming as we know more.
**Our May workshop at Cottonwood Gallery, originally scheduled with Heather Held, is being reorganized as a Paste Paper Workshop Rosie Kelly-style, presented by Deb Strawn and Cecelia Harris May 16/17. The workshop will be $50 with a limit of 18 students.
**Leslie will be planning a card-making session as a service project to stock cards for the Myron Stratton Home. She also suggested we letter bookmarks for First Friday events again once Cottonwood opens up.
**The books on the table are from Kay’s collect and are free to take home.
Library Book Review:
**Carole shared the book Vanishing Flora by Dugald Stermer originally introduced to her in Renee Jorgensen’s Traditional Illustrations class. Dugald’s interest was changing the world for the better through his drawings of leaves and botanicals in graphite and diluted inks. He often added a map for highlighting locations, and Carole brought a piece that reflected Stermer’s style. She made it for a granddaughter’s birthday using sketches of leaves and even a tiny map. As Carole was researching Dugald Stermer, she found they crossed paths several times without knowing it when both of them lived and worked in and around San Francisco.
Show & Share:
****Carole brought a card she made to demonstrate how a Pebeo masking pen works for lettering under watercolor.
**Tom had slides to show of his recent lettering project. In 30” tall letters, he painted Northwest Airlines Inc. for the National Museum of WWII Aviation with a 4” brush.
**Cecelia brought samples of the work she’s been doing in Yve’s class.
**Sally sowed us a draft of a commissioned poem she did in the Italian hand she learned in Heather Held’s class at Iampeth.
**Nell brought several of her lovely watercolors painted while at Glen Eyrie on an overnight with her husband.
Evening Presentation:
**Lonnie gave a brief history of Bister Inks, how Amity Parks was instrumental in exposing them to the calligraphic community in the US, and how to mix them, as one would mix walnut ink. She also showed us how well images and/or lettering can be printed on fabric such as muslin backed with freezer paper and slide through a standard inkjet printer. The examples she brought were wine sacks she and Deb created. Deb used a canvas drop cloth from Harbor Freight and it was surprising how well it went through the printer. Lonnie encouraged us to go to Amity Park’s Pinterest page to see the way she uses Bister Inks in conjunction with metallic inks that seem to float on top.
The key to getting the letters to splatter on the paper was to push the pen up for the down strokes on relatively rough cold pressed watercolor paper. She used a fun EZA pen she bought from Alan Ariail to demonstrate how it could make wide letters like a standard folded pen, as well as very fine letters when the tip was used. She encouraged us to add tiny drops of other bister colors before the letter dried so the color would migrate to the edges as it dried. If we didn’t work fast enough, water added into the letters worked just fine. Lonnie had a station set up front for adding metallic colors so they floated on top of the Bister Inks.
When the letters were dry, she showed us how to use a pencil to draw thin lines to the right of each letter and smudge the lines to create a shadow effect, giving the letters dimension. It was nice to learn something new!
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| Sally Liverman |
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| Cecelia Harris |
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| Cecelia Harris |
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| Cecelia Harris |
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| Cecelia Harris |
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| Nell's Watercolors |
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| Nell's Watercolors |
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| Book Reviewed |
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| Carole Rudy |
