making banners with drawn copperplate letters

Class of Copperplate for June 1, 2009 at Beverly Hills. 

By Judy Shibata

Today DeAnn demonstrated drawing copperplate in pencil, then coloring it in with markers. On "masking" paper used for house painting that she found at Home Depot, she wrote out a name in pencil. She drew each letter and filled it in before going to the next one so the spacing would be even. Then she colored it in using markers.  Erase the pencil carefully. Tip:  erase in one direction to reduce the chance of smudging and/or paper wrinkling.  The paper was greenish-colored, about 6 inches wide and on a roll.

 Then DeAnn demonstrated writing copperplate with brush markers. Hold the pen high for thins, low for thicks, and apply pressure like when writing with the copperplate nib. Shadowing with a gray marker gives a 3-D effect. Types of brush markers:  Pentel Metallic Brush, Zig Brush, Elmers Paintastics, Prang Metallic Brush Pens, Marvy LePlumes, Pitt Brush Pen.

 DeAnn also covered addressing envelopes. For formal addressing, start the first waist-line around the center of the envelope. If the envelope is light-colored and isn’t lined or of heavyweight paper, then you should be able to see guidelines on acetate (transparency) using a light table. Highlight the lines on the guideline that you’ll be writing on.  Set the envelope up on the guideline & tape corners (cut from another envelope) into position so that you can easily insert & remove envelopes for addressing without having to line it up against the guideline each time.

Tips on addressing:  look over the list of addressees and write out the longest and shortest lines to get an idea of the range in line length.  Find an average to use.

 If it’s difficult to see the guidelines on the light table, try turning off the ambient light around you.  That should improve visibility.

 If the envelope is dark-colored or has a lining inside and you can't see the guideline through it, use the "Phantom Liner" or ("Reflections" as they are now called.) This is a system of using reflective acrylic panels and writing on the lines “reflected” on the paper.

 After you address an envelope, place it in a drying rack.  DeAnn uses one that her husband made from a spring attached to a wooden board.

 Homework:  See the “friendship” handout. Trace it with pencil on a piece of practice paper (or draw in freehand using the 1-inch x-height guideline), then fill it in with pencil. Pay special attention to the curves and where they start to thicken and thin. Do them one letter at a time. See that all the down strokes are the same width, see that the white spaces are the same. You can set yours over the exemplar to see if it's similar to the one DeAnn drew.