My morris side had a drum that was the wrong colour for the side. We used to hide it under a cloth, but the cloth was now full of holes, so I decided to repaint it and use my new #signwriting knowledge to paint the side's name on.

So, I started by taking the drum skin and supports off the blue drum and then giving it four coats of quick drying spray paint in dark green.

Then with much trepidation I painted 'Sutton Masque' on it in metallic gold enamel paint.

It needed a second coat of the gold, and then, when that was dry, I covered the whole drum with a coat of yacht enamel.

Then I put all the drum furniture and the skin back on again. And now we don't need to hide it under a cloth 🙂

I am much happier about this than I have been about anything I've painted since the bins!

Four signs to paint up today, then loading up the kiln for a glaze firing tomorrow and hopefully throwing a few more small Christmas gift things if there's time. #signwriting #pottery

Suspect my attempts to fix the S on the shop sign has made it worse. Note to self MORE SPACE. I need to leave more negative space that is not letters. It is a very good thing that this is just a #SignWriting course exercise and not a real shop sign.

It is still so strange to me that a sign colour combination can go dormant for months or even years on end, then BOOM, everyone wants it. #signwriting

@Htaggert @kathyartist Perhaps I should say then that there aren't many people on the hashtags that I am interested in. No one has updated the #canals hashtag this week, and my #signwriting #calligraphy list has had two toots on it in days. It's probably not helped by the fact that over here on we're defederated from @mastodon.social, so we're not seeing some of the biggest places on the Fediverse. But I like my cozy little enclave. I'm not complaining about that :)

First piece of public #signwriting Ie first thing I've done that will be released into the wild of the real world, to be seen by members of the public, as opposed to stuff no one but myself (and possibly my social media pals) will see.

My bins!

The white smudges around it are from where I transferred the design onto the bin by writing the number on a piece of paper, rubbing chalk heavily all over the back of the piece of paper to turn it into a kind of tracing paper, and then drawing over the number again. This transfers the design in a thin white line, but it transfers a few smudges too. As soon as the number is dry, I'll wipe the chalk smudges off with a cloth.

This is my mixed recycling bin. I did my green recycling bin too, although by that point I was losing the light and couldn't see my chalked line, which made it difficult. Lesson learned there - don't try to paint in the dark!

When I started #pottery back in February, it was joyous to find out how many crossovers there are with other crafts I’ve done and how that experience helped. Now #pottery has helped #signwriting by inspiring me to make stilts for signs while their paint dries, so I can paint the front and back at the same time. Cuts the undercoating/drying/recoating cycle from 10 days to 5 🥂

Fun today painting signs and refining shapes for my sister’s Christmas present of fermentation jars and weights. Merrily lost several hours trimming and smoothing. #pottery #signwriting

So, I started a #signwriting course at the very beginning of September this year. It's a year long online course taught by video, with a Facebook group where you can ask questions and a bunch of worksheets that you can print out, in order to paint over them and learn how to control the brush that way.

The guy who teaches it learned his craft with a three year long City and Guilds course, and says that his teachers learned via the traditional apprenticeship that lasted five years. So I feel that having done it for three months, not an awful lot can be expected of me.

Still, I've practiced every day for at least an hour a day since I started, and I think you can see the difference :)

@cy
Say it with us.

Fake.

Book.

You may be interested in #ReclaimTheOpenWeb for a fun, holiday #signWriting project, also.

@jeffcliff