Book Elves

Lettering test

Walla! the art blog returns. Oh, walla? That’s French for “here it is”. Like when the guy discovered that city in Washington, he was so excited about it he said “Walla! Walla! Washington!”

Here, I’m testing the lettering for a possible return to the old format. This is the original, long-standing Elf Life format, based on the format of E.C. Segar’s historic newspaper comic strip, Thimble Theater (starring Popeye, of course).

Within this panel, for a while I used a kind of crazed calligraphic lettering which I simply can not do, now, because if I were to drag out the ink bottle there would be trouble. So I must use disposable pens for everything.

The trouble is that the pens I have are either not big enough or way too big. Disposable calligraphy pens in particular do not come as small as I would need to reproduce my old metal nib lettering (no calligraphy pen I could ever find, anyway).

The lettering in the lower half looks fine in the example, above, which is about the size you’d expect to find it on the site, or within the PDF. But reduced to iPhone size, the lettering is too faint.

There is only one pen that is slightly stronger. The next test will use it exclusively, with the lettering ruled a bit larger.

Written, directed, and performed by Carson “Fluffy” Fire.
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