Sunday, September 10

Creative Revolution Challenge Prompt:

Create Studies: These can be color studies, drawings, mini paintings, photos, writing, a body movement, you name it. Explore one thing in a variety of ways.

I HAVE long enjoyed a deep connection with handwriting. Such was my fascination that I taught myself to write in cursive when I was 7 years old or so. That was back in the olden days when schools still taught and used cursive from third grade on. Nowadays, students print. Or type. Alas, cursive handwriting is a lost art!

For a future blog entry, I will dig out some of my maternal grandfather’s writing. You haven’t seen cursive till you’ve seen his handiwork. Gorgeous swirls and magnificent swoops using the whole hand. Pen nibs and inkwells must have been required school supplies. Cursive love runs in the family I guess, since my mother landed a secretarial job in her young adulthood strictly on the strength of her handwriting.

Today I worked with handwriting as a type of line, scribbling most of it so that it cannot be read. I added paint & colored inks plus other line elements to see what might happen. I would say HANDWRITING is a bit like a swirly thread stitched throughout my life, and I’m excited to use it in my art more often in the future. Watch for it.