Buncha Uncial

There's a local institution that asks me each year to inscribe their graduates' names on their diplomas.  The first year, I was given a sample of their previous calligrapher's work, which was a very bold Uncial hand.  I thought it was a bit odd for a diploma, but have come to appreciate how it goes with the rest of the document (which I'm not showing here, but take my word for it...).  Now I have lots of fun playing with letter variations, "to-dot-or-not-to-dot" (a point on which Ward Dunham and Sheila Waters will forever disagree), and how to squeeze some of those very long names onto the page with this expansive hand.

One solution is to overlap letters---love the double-double-Ns.

Thoroughly Modern Mark Making

Well, here's a new take on a calligraphy tool!  This is a representation of about 45 minutes worth of work on my laptop, every trackball movement and click, as recorded by a cool little (free) app called IOGraphica.

What if I put a frame around it, courtesy of the Graphics Fairy?

Here's about an hour's worth of work in Photoshop with the cordless mouse; I'm obviously a little more agile with that:

And here's about two hours of random work, doing finances, looking at blogs and answering emails.... how long would it take to fill up the whole page?!?  

Kind of a new-age Etch-a-Sketch!  Fun to play around with, but don't think I'll be giving up the pen and ink just yet...