I’ve started to work in a new pad of watercolor paper and had the idea to start with the black lines first this time. Here are the first two. One was made with Pentel Pocket Brush, the other was with a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen on Canson Watercolor paper, 7″ x 10″.
The next layer will be watercolors and we will see where it goes from there.
The black line style I’ve developed came from my background of doing traditional, old English style calligraphy as a kid. I used to do lettering for table tents, name tags and things like that for gatherings. I would also create flyers and posters for my Mom’s business. Later, in my early 20’s I started doing a more abstract version of calligraphy.
Later I found out that this is a known thing in the Calligraphy world and found lots of inspiration in other great artist. Here are a few of my favorites.
Defer
Niels Shoe Meulman
el Seed
Retna
and one more that is not as much a calligrapher as a person who created secret writing and is a huge art influence is Allyson Grey.
You can see from a lot of my previous work I also like to photograph my writing and kaleidoscope it to come up with all kinds of interesting “Artifacts” on my journey as a Cosmic Archeologist and explorer of inner space.
Enjoy,
Mark Bray
Artist, Musician, Cosmic Archeologist
The other major influence was Chinese, Japanese and Arabic calligraphy.