The old music hall song tells us that “the longest mile is the last mile home”. Metaphorically speaking, as least, I have been discovering the truth of that today. Regular readers of this blog might well remember the “Wassail” project I engaged with a few weeks back.* I have had it in mind for a little while to do a kind of frontispiece to this group of drawings, and my wrestling with mono-printing during the last week has been directed to this end. Finally I have come cup with a piece of print that will serve well as a background, and today I tried to complete this project.
As part of it went very well. The illustration will include images of the leaves and fruit of both apple and lime trees, and I am well satisfied with my work there. The problem, however, is that I need to put in the title in order to complete the job. This really has to be hand-written in a kind of archaic script, and therein lies the problem.
A friend of mine does calligraphy as a hobby, and I have seen some of his work. (He sent us a lovely Christmas card using a design of his own.) I remember him describing the extremely time-consuming efforts necessary to ensure that all the letters are formed correctly, and I decided to take his advice seriously rather than ruin the work I have already done. I am glad I did, because having filled several sheets of paper with the title I have in mind I am still far from satisfied with what I can produce.
In fact, quite a considerable period of experimentation was needed before I selected the right gauges of pen-nib. Then I had to make sure that I could load the pen with ink without over-loading it, and it took me some tries before I settled finally for the realisation that the loading with ink probably needs to be done between each and every letter. Enough is enough, at least for one day. At the moment, however, I feel that I have a long way to go before I have that confident and precise control of hand and pen that will be required to produce a piece of work that satisfies me.
It seems perverse to say so, but I am almost grateful for our current isolation regime, because it does cut down the number of outside activities I might feel I could be doing, and keeps my nose to the grindstone. At the moment, however, it does feel to be a very long mile I’m travelling.
* This is a set of illustrations in which I have been attempting to wrestle with images of what might be considered to be English identity.