The Prayer of St Francis

Monday morning, after Mass and having our hands blessed, we began the preparation to letter the Prayer of St. Francis. Kathy Milici, the instructor, had done a layout that we would follow.  We traced the versals (the large capital letters) and the poppy design. We also ruled the paper, Canson Moulin du Roy, following her guidelines.

Kathy chose an upright, bouncy, Italic variation for this prayer. I knew the prayer as a hymn, so the bouncy letters reminded me of musical notes, and the uneven lines reminded me of the melody. The lettering was to be done with a size C-4 Speedball nib. As I am a Southpaw, I wasn't sure how many lefthanded nibs would be available so I brought my own. I don't use the Speedball nibs beyond teaching with the C-1. I use a Brause nib and worked out the size to be close to the Brause 1.5 mm.

We spent all day Monday practicing Kathy's Italic variation on layout bond paper. In the afternoon, we lettered on a scrap of the Moulin du Roy to get a feel for writing on the good paper

On Tuesday, we lettered the entire text on our good paper. I honestly didn't think I would be able to letter the entire piece. I'm a hooker (and proud of it 😉) That is I approach the writing line from above instead of below. As a Southpaw, I also write directly over my writing line where a right handed person writes away from the writing line. For me, this means if I am not slow and careful, I will put my paw in wet ink and smear it. So my routine is to write 4 or 5 letters, maybe a word or two and then I have to sit and give the ink a couple of minutes to dry.

I had told Kathy I am not able to keep up with right handed classmates. And that's okay. If I wasn't able to finish lettering the piece, I could always work on it at home. I really wanted to learn Kathy's technique for painting poppies.

Kathy was very laid back and encouraging with all of us. And as it turned out, I finished lettering my piece in the same time frame as the other students.