The Art of Herman Killian

South Hampshire Calligraphers Workshop
Killian's work is epitomized by classical simplicity with an underlying tension within every letter. Beginning with classical forms then moving on to modernising these using ligatures, reversals and other capital forms we will create a piece of work in graphite

LK, Iola, LK, LK, Anon, Olena, Sue, Lesley, Kim, Sharon, Val L, Anon, Angela, Marion, Jan, Val Y., Anon, Joy, Angela, Anon. (I didn't notice I'd scanned Angela's in twice, then did another three to make up the square! Duh!)

After anaylsing Killian's work everybody traced the letters and measured them, comparing them with Trajan Capitals. Guess what? They were just about identical in width.
Keeping this in mind, participants explored their own letterforms drawing from alphabets they were familar with. They composed ligatures, referring to Killian's, mine and tried some of their own variations.

Jan Sambell

 The "project of the day" was a little daunting in that a letter design was to be put into a circular format. Its always good to challenge people and was certainly worthwhile.
Pencil work is beautiful and very yummy, but really does not photograph well. Also, the artifical lighting complicates things, so I had very few photos I could use)

Marion McKenzie

Sharon Robinson

Sharon Robinson - detail

I felt that everyone had the beginnings of a successful piece to take home to continue working on and what is more important, a new understanding of letterforms and their inter-relationships. Thanks for the hard work everyone.

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