Calligraphic birds

Here's a story about an idea that accidentally turned into something different. I found a Dover book on drawings done in a calligraphic style (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Album-Pictorial-Calligraphy-Scrollwork/dp/0486249743/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248711146&sr=1-26) and I loved the complexities of the drawings, and the way all those curls and scrolls turned into an animal or bird. I wanted to learn more about this technique so I did a few Google searches on "calligraphic art", but to my disappointment I couldn't find much about this kind of work. (I did find some websites with wonderful modern calligraphic art, but that's another story)

But I also turned up some amazing websites with all sorts of figurative subjects done in Arabic writing. For example, have a look at

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2006/06/zoomorphic-calligraphy.html

to see some really stunning work

After poring over these beautiful drawings for a long time (and wondering just what the Arabic text was saying) it occurred to me that you could do the same thing with lettering and quotations in any other script. So I looked up a few short quotations about birds in English, and turned them into calligraphic designs

It was surprisingly easy - I just did outline drawings of birds and then filled in the outline with words, juggling everything around until the shape of the words reflected the shape of the animal. The digitising was straightforward, although inevitably there were a lot of jump stitches - you can't avoid them when you're doing a lot of separate shapes like unconnected letters

The one thing I don't like about these birds is that you can't reverse them - if you try and mirror-image them the writing doesn't make sense any more. So if I want them to face in the other direction I'll have to draw them again from scratch

If you want to know what the texts say: number 1 is a modified quotation from Emily Dickinson: "I hope you love birds: it saves going to heaven". Number 2 is from Persian poetry "The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp". The third is William Blake: "A robin redbreast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage" and the last one is "Keep a green tree within your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come".

There's no way these birds even begin to approach the artistry of the Arabic work, but it's a start, and it's something I will continue working on

Comments

[Spanky]

Love these. You are so clever.