Peter Thornton Workshop

Peter Thornton, Professional Calligrapher for over 50 years and teacher for over 40 years. “Yep, I’ve been around the calligraphic block!”

This is a 2 day workshop. It will be a gentle introduction to the (12th/13th century) decorative Versal capital letter and modern variants.

Day 1
We shall be working with the ‘normal’ and conventional Versal letter. First in pencil before moving on to pen and ink or gouache. There will be many short and helpful exercises and projects throughout to show why this major capital and colorful letter lasted for over 500 years. It was first used as a functional and beautiful ‘signpost to the reader’ before being used in important words and opening sentences and paragraphs.

Day 2
We shall now focus on producing a more contemporary Versal letter that better suits our current needs and desire for inventiveness. Making small and quiet changes to the basic strokes (and serifs!) we shall immediately alter the ‘flavor’ and charm from the conventional decorative capital to one that both delights the eye and mind by simply breaking the pattern of our expectation. A feature of the workshop will be to show many exercises in class (and at home) that clarifies and simplifies, how to practice more effectively. Throughout will be many short talks and demonstrations and much sensitive personal tuition.

Materials List:
• Pencils, HB and, if possible, 4B or 8B Derwent Wash
• Sharpening sand paper block
• Borden and Riley Layout pad #37 (highly recommended) or similar            (11″ X 8.5″ or 11″ X 14″ or 11″ X 17″)
• Any better quality paper, e.g. Arches Text Wove, Arches MBM,                     Fabriano Ingres, Rives BFK or similar.
• Small nibs, Rexel size 4, Brause or Tape 1.5mm, 1mm and/or smaller.
• Gouache AND watercolours of your choice.
• Mixing palette and water pots
• Fine pointed brushes, size 2 and/or size 4
• Old brushes to load your nibs