The idea for this particular piece came about as a result of my insensitivity towards a friend who was in a similarly hard place in their personal life. I asked too much of them at the worst possible moment, and realized that just like I’m doing all I can to survive and sometimes can’t do emotional labor for others, I can’t expect others in complicated life situations to do emotional labor for me.
If all any of us can do right now is survive, it’s enough.
Below is my process for this particular piece.
The initial sketch. I wanted to juxtapose my typical brush calligraphy and small Roman caps with a hand-lettered Didot type treatment.
After sketching out my placement of the lettering, I used a Zebra brush-tip pen for the calligraphy, and a 1mm Micron for the Roman caps and Didot type.
Once I finished inking, I took a photo and adjusted the lettering and layout in Photoshop. I cleaned up the irregularity of the lines, adjusted some of the type itself, and removed my uneven Roman caps and replaced them with Showcase Sans.
Once I was satisfied with the Photoshop clean-up, I went to Illustrator and began vectoring the lettering. Using a method I’ve described elsewhere of using 90-degree angle handles on anchor points placed at the apex of each curve, I worked to make sure the lettering flowed organically without feeling too stiff.
When I vector, I don’t finalize all the fine details until I have everything laid out. Some of the letter-spacing and leading needed some adjustments here, but I was happy to have the main vectoring complete.
The final product: calligraphy and hand-lettering by me (with help from Showcase Sans for the smaller text). 2016.
