Roman Caps Study with Charles Pearce

I'm taking a 3 month Roman Caps workshop with Charles Pearce organized by Karen Ness of the CCC. Charles is one of the most well know and respected calligraphers in the world. He is truly amazing. The first weekend of study took place March 26th at the Burnham Fire House. My objective of the course is to learn the structure of Roman Caps and how to use a flat brush. Prior to this workshop I never used a flat brush to create any lettering.

All participants of the workshop have an assignment to letter 3 lines of text with proper proportions and spacing. Definitely the most complex lettering project I have ever experienced. I am not working digitally to create the letters. The tools for this one are a pencil, gouache and a flat brush. The letters require a lot of brush manipulation.

This image courtesy of Karen is my critique with Charles. He was kind enough to explain how to improve my spacing and letter proportions of the first lettering draft. Fortunately there were no fires in Burnham at the time as I borrowed a fire dept. vehicle for the lettering critique.



Over the course of a month I have been at work on my assignment and have lost track of the hours put into it all. I am finally having some success with a flat brush but I've got a long way to go. My studo is now filled with countless sheets of practice letters. Best of all my schnoodle LittleDude is taking a keen interest in Roman Caps. Maybe someday I will teach him to use a flat brush and we can letter together.

I have one week to finish the assignment.