All Souls Night

Happy Samhain, Halloweem, All Souls night or however you celebrate....this is for you....

Loreena McKennitt - Dantes Prayer Calligraphy Inspired By Music

CJ posted a very valid question about whether I listen to music while I work, which ties up nicely with this post… so thanks CJ. I thought I would write about my latest piece of work Dantes Prayer by Lorreena McKennitt. I suggest that after you have read the blog post you go back and click the link and listen to the music and lyrics (in a separate window) while you read the lyrics on the photo graphs. They ‘should; be able to be enlarged…I say ‘should’ because one never knows with google! Hopefully his will give you some idea of the ‘Spirit’ and ‘Essence’ that ends up being contained within the piece. First off I type out the lyrics. This makes it personality-less, quite dead and without preconceived ideas. Then while listening to the song over and over and yes over again, I make scribbles on the sheet that probably make no sense to anyone but me. This enables me to get a feel and flavour of the song. Which words need to be large, which words need to be strong, which are quiet, loud, subdued or even extended.

Then comes the colours. Listening through the track again I scribble down the colours that the words bring to mind. This particular piece evolved colour wise all by itself. I must admit I wasn’t expecting a rainbow! A chalk pastel background was laid down and blended carefully. I should tell you at this point that the sheet of paper is a full sized sheet of Saunders Waterford.

It always pays to do a test piece. (Thanks Suzi for reminding me of what I preach to my students!) In this case I had bought new chalk pastels (caran Dache) and it was disastrous! I usually use Inscribe for pastel work and have never ever had a problem. These were greasy and oily and a right pain in the asse to write on. Never mind, we calligraphers have tricks up our sleeves to enable us to write on most surfaces. I cut the pastel back with pumice powder and it seemed to work, albeit with extreme difficulty still and the writing was painfully slow. After starting to write it out I lost patience very quickly and shelved the whole thing and decided to rework the background and start afresh.

When writing the piece out I play the CD, line for line, checking and rechecking for those loud parts and extended words while I write, stopping the CD at every line….just to make extra sure. I don’t always get it right, but that’s all part of being human.

The final touches are when you then incorporate the background music and instruments as part of the whole piece. In this case the piano was symbolised by watercolour squares and the no verbal vocal (don’t know what else to call it!) was shown as a silver thread, running upwards at the rise and downwards at the fall of the ‘whatever you cal it’.

My son has bought a DVD burner and has a video recorder. I really want to have him to video the words, play the music over the top and then edit it as a whole piece. This way the music and the calligraphy become one… and hopefully the effect will be amazing. Overall I love this piece. It’s still new, so it’s my baby and not for sale. It’s proved to me that I can still do large pieces of work despite the difficulties with my eyes and I know that through the music I can make my letter live. This kind of work is specialist. As calligraphers and Lettering Artists we get used to doing the mundane, run of the mill but keeps wolves from the door kind of jobs. This is what we trained over 10 years for! Yes folks you can become a brain surgeon in less time… and it’s a long standing joke with calligraphers. So go on…. What music inspires you? Have you created art to music and if you have, can you link to it on the comments and direct everyone to your blog? Go on, put on some music, pick up your paints, pens or whatever medium you use, dance like a deva and create!
And the next 3 pictures are the detail of the whole song, preferably looked at while the song plays in a seperate window..... here's that link again Loreena McKennitt Dantes Prayer.... ENJOY!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

What Has Calligraphy Got To do With Music?

I’ve always had a love of music. Perhaps it was one of the benefits of being brought up by a young mum and her siblings. Perhaps it’s because I was born a child of the 60’s, flower power, The Beatles, The Bachelors, Mick J, The Twist….. heavier, rock and rolling, dancing, more optimistic music than people had been used to. At 2 ½ I would go next door to Bobby and (now what was her name) anyway, Mr and Mrs Wilsons and be fully capable of stacking records and dancing to a variety of music, even singing ‘I Wanna Be Bobby’s Girl’ to Bobby Wilson, whilst doing the twist.

Dance , music and rhythm played an important part in my life, in fact right throughout my life. From Gymnastics and Ballet, to discos and musical instrument playing. I love my Djembe’s, more importantly I love playing with others. Something really special happens when you drum in a circle. Something that cannot be described even by those who experience it. The Druids would probably call it Awen. It’s a connection to something far above and outside of ourselves. Something perhaps more of the spiritual realm. Many different cultures, religions and belief systems use sound and in particular drums, in their practices.
The beat of the drum, the beat of your heart, the beat of Mother Earth…all are connected. They say if you have a heartbeat, you can drum.
Ironically, that beat and rhythm is also evident in Calligraphy. Each line of text has it’s own feeling, heartbeat and rhythm. It’s hard to explain this to a non calligrapher. During my many years of training, the similarities between Calligraphy and music was mentioned. It’s no surprise then, that the time I feel more connected to my work is when I work with song lyrics.

I still remember the first time the ‘Awen’ happened for me. I was asked to put words into an exhibition in Durham Cathedral. At the time I had discovered Enya and the song ‘How Can I Keep From Singing’ conjured up pictures, images and colours in my head. This experience was new to me and at the time I was still a relative beginner in calligraphy. The words inspired me, the melody hauntingly beautiful. I still remember the piece. A variety of blues and gold leaf. And the whole thing was done in a circle, cut into quarters by the gold leaf. The piece sold the first day it went on exhibition…. In fact I was the only one who sold anything in that exhibition. I had priced it not to sell. Many calligraphers will tell you that a newly created piece is like a baby and we get VERY attached to some things. The piece becomes like a new born child and needs to be looked at, admired, smiled at and somehow these pieces become very close to your heart. There is a gestation and incubation period which needs to be got over, before we can loose our attachment and let it go. I know all this sounds very strange, but it’s true. The connection to the spirit that went into the creating of the piece is very strong. Sometimes we feel like we had no real consciousness in creating the piece, almost as if guided by something outside ourselves.
After that I went on to create more music pieces. Some were done for commissions, others were done for myself, but always that ‘spirit/Awen/outside myself thing happened. I wonder if it’s because it’s a large piece and you do end up going into a sort of meditative trance on large pieces. It’s happened also when I wrote The Charge Of The Goddess out as a gift. I did really well on this one, I gave it away straight away…despite my inner child shouting NO NO, GIVE IT BACK, ME WANTS IT!

I love the band Runrig and have done many pieces of work with their lyrics. Both for them and fans. Unfortunately most of these were done to commission so you are never given free reign that you would otherwise have.

I was honoured to do a piece called The Fox and commissioned for Kelly Groucutt from ELO. I received a tape of a song that he wrote and performed, but was never released on the open market. The song was called The Fox. I have a photo of him with the piece but have only a black scan of the piece itself. I would have loved to have this done as a colour print, but as most of these pieces are huge, the financial costs would be unrealistic. Kelly sadly died on 19th February this year.

Kelly Groucutt always enjoyed touring and was just as happy playing with a local, little known band called Session 60 as he was doing a one-man performance in a pub. Most of all, he loved playing with Orchestra. I was fortunate to go and see him in the band play a return convert in 2006.

The last two pieces are The Fox Piece, all others are runrig. Appologies for poor quality of the photos, but they are taken from scans of 'real' photos. Thank god those days are over!

Merlin Am I

Well I've done it...the Dahm the Bard piece is finished....and I'm really over the moon with it. Above is the full piece and below is the detail. Don't forget to click on the photos to enlarge.

RUNRIG Lyrics piece SOLD!

I'm so pleased that my Runrig piece has sold on ebay and seems to have gone to a good home. I got £50 for it....not the price I wanted but every little helps towards my website fund and there is no price on the pleasure I hope it gives the winning bidder.