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TITLE: “Do the Next Thing” - https://youtu.be/Pceni1PpPZ4
When I work on a new piece of calligraphy, I like to use words that have meaning and application to my life. In this way, art becomes a type of therapy for me in addition to providing a creative outlet. Over the summer I have been reading “ the NEXT RIGHT THING...a simple, soulful practice for making life decisions by Emily Freeman. Within the book she shared a poem, written in 1897 and titled Ye Nexte Thynge, wherein the reader is encouraged to not become anxious about what path to take in life, but instead focus on doing the “next thing” and allowing God to work out the details.
The poem has five stanzas, each ending with the phrase “Do the next thing”. As there was quite a bit of text to generate, I thought a one-signature booklet would be a good way to present the verse. I chose the Charles Rennie Mackintosh monoline lettering hand which was quite fun as it opened a world of wonderful art generated by Mackintosh; including his iconic Mackintosh Rose which is still wildly popular. I studied art deco books looking for color ideas and made sketches of possible ways to design the phrase “Do the next thing” in a style reminiscent of Mackintosh. His style is very linear, containing strong lines, squares, negative space, and of course, stylized roses. Once I had a design for the repeated phrase, I practiced lettering some the poem with a 1.0 micron pen to get a feel for how the lettering would look on the page, and what size of paper I would need. In a nod to Mackintosh’s use of strong vertical lines for his chairs and use of negative space, I designed each page to have a large rectangle of negative space at the top of the page to balance the weight of the rectangular design on the bottom. By itself, the text looked too boxy and bottom-heavy on the page but adding the tall rosebud along the left edge of the page tied all the elements together in a cohesive manner.
Now it was time to construct the book. I settled on a booklet 10x7.5 inches when closed. I made a mockup using copy paper and determined that for 5 stanzas, I needed 3 pages (10x15”) and one sheet of glycine. This would allow each stanza to have its own page and gave me one extra page for some artwork. Thai marbled momi paper was applied to 2-ply Bristol board using PVA glue for the front/back cover. Three sheets of Frankfurt paper (10x15”) and one piece of glycine were cut to size for the interior pages.
As each text page would be laid out the same, I made a template on marker layout paper of the page design: Tall rose bud, rectangle text box and guidelines were drawn with a micron pen. Using a light table, the design was traced onto each page with a mechanical pencil. Before adding text to the page, I painted the right-hand edge of every page with Holbein brilliant gold gouache using the flat side of a ¼ inch bristle brush. The rose buds and text boxes were outlined with a 0.3 micron and then filled in with watercolors.
Using graph paper, each stanza was written out with a #1 micron and then traced onto the Frankfort paper using a pencil and a light table. For consistency, every letter ‘o’ was first drawn in pencil using a circle template.
The final lettering was executed using Winsor Newton gouache in Winsor Violet, Brilliant Violet and Alizarin crimson using B5, B1 and 513 EF monoline nibs. The 513 EF nib was used to construct all the crossbars as it gave a very fine line. The final step was designing the inside-cover art page. The design was traced with a micron pen and 24 karat gold leaf accents were added to the roses and leaves. The rose design was then painted with watercolors to match the color of the marbled paper on the cover. The border of the rose design was painted with gold fine-tec paint. To protect the gold leaf, the art page is nestled against a sheet of glycine.
Eventually I will fashion a pocket out of the Thai marbleized paper for the inside jacket to place the colophon.
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