I have always loved playing with handwriting ever since I can remember. I even got told off in school for giving it too much attention, and I was sent out of class! But now it is handwriting that has been thrown out of the classroom! No longer is handwriting being taught in New Zealand schools. Computers seem to have won the day. But I recently felt I had to do what I could, and do my part in bringing a return to sanity and simplicity. It is the right of every child to be taught how to hold a pencil and to be taught its magic.
Hence this huge project: the HANDWRITING of my entire book: ... The Shoebox Letters, ... I did it! ...and in 324 pages!
"NOTHING IS AS CONTAGIOUS AS EXAMPLE."
The STYLE was carefully chosen for this book... for I wanted it, primarily to be just something beautiful for the eye, and as something lovely to simply leaf through without any necessity to actually read it... because the content of the book is mystical and deep and not everybody's 'cup of tea,' so to speak. (Just as Jesus spoke in PARABLES, so as not to offend the multitude, so I felt the need to hide my message in beauty, likewise.) I practiced compacting and compressing my own free-style handwriting and found it flowed and delighted. So I cut out a cardboard stencil . . . like a four-paned window . . . and used this throughout the whole book, for continuity and cohesion, drawing this shape in pencil upon hundreds of sheets of cartridge paper.
The ILLUMINATED CAPITALS I made as simple as possible in order to compliment the modern and youthful style of the handwriting. And I designed the sequence of their colours as the seven colours of light, so that when you flick through the book you see a rainbow. The simple star constellation of the Southern CROSS was used to identify the work as both, antipodean, for I live in the southern hemisphere in New Zealand, as well as it being a precious sign meaning much to me in my heart.
I have recently started experimenting with 'MIRROR WRITING'... and I am enjoying it very much! I can do it quite fast now, because I have developed a different style of freehand which has the ends of the letters pointing constantly to the left... and I was amazed at how strongly, it felt like being left-handed! Through this interesting sensation I could now identify, and really feel for, three of my six children who are left-handed.
I am quite ambidextrous myself...and I am wondering if maybe that is why I suffered chronically from DYSLEXIA. Once upon a time I couldn't spell a single word the right way round. ...I mostly got the right collection of letters, but assembled them in the wrong order! ...But I have since learned to spell, and quite decently really, by doing a lot of reading; staring hard at the words while I was reading. ...Oh, and I guess that is why I am a slow reader, too! ...And, how I learned to write sale-able stories, and books! Hhmm, now I see it! All the time I was slowly and endlessly reading, I was doing a niffty bit of study of the English language, but without any work!
Oh, and just one more interesting thing, or crazy fact to share is that when I first began playing with 'MIRROR WRITING,' or wanting to write 'the wrong way round' - as a form of encoding or encrypting the controversial content of my writing - I began to typewrite the words back-to-front; even starting from the end of the paragraph, and ending at the beginning of it. But - and this just shows how dumb I am - it didn't work!! When I faced my page of typing to the bathroom mirror it was just as muddled as before!! One of my daughters laughed at me, "But, Mummy, you can't turn the keys on the keyboard back-to-front! You really are silly; Mummy; but it's okay, we love you!"
NO TRAINING. I have never had any training in graphic design, or in calligraphy, or in art; or, in fact, in anything at all! I am all self-taught: 'all taught of God!' But I have always had in me, a sense of design : an intrinsic delight, in knowing that a certain composition I see in my mind's eye upon the piece of paper before me, is either pleasingly 'right,' or horribly 'wrong!' It's just an instantaneous perceiving that comes all by itself. I discovered 'the golden third,' this way by my own silly happy self in a sensible happy accident.
Oh, and I have a very great love for BLANK SPACES. I love the white space 'around' my scribbles of black ink. It is more beautiful to me than all the inked shapes themselves. ...Am I 'mental,' I wonder, but what is not there is to me more interesting than what is there! And I have seen this peculiar principle apply to all my life and understanding. I have gained more joy and wisdom, from 'not-knowing' than I have from 'knowing!' And it is this glorious 'BACK-TO-FRONT-THING' which has worked deeply in me that costly inner truth which few wish to know; and which is why I occasionally encode or encrypt some of my writings! ...And all for the joy and delight of those who have 'ears to hear, and eyes to see!'
'That men may not be grieved by it they leave the truth aside and move to other things more obtuse... ...It is not those things we want to know that help us the most, and reveal what we're after, but those we don't want to know and run from: the real treasure was where we hadn't looked for it before.'
( - In the Paths of Myrddin Wyllt; Yn y Llwybrau Myrddin Wyllt.)
Here is a link to a related post:
‘DRAWING in the Spirit of God...’ A life of love and childlike delight... ...the creativity and glorious liberty of the children of God.
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