CALLIGRAPHY ON CLOTH

THIS VIDEO
This ongoing Video Diary by myself John Neal, sometimes known as John Longcroft-Neal, as the whim takes me.

TODAY’S SUBJECT is a requested video demonstrating calligraphy using a brush on canvas.The subject is a commission of a Bahá’i healing prayer.

GENERAL STUFF
I am retired from two careers of primary school teaching when I was deputy head of a Middle School and Primary School, and as a self employed Chalkboard Artist from 2002 until I reached the grand old age of 65 in 2016. Since I retired it’s like a second childhood but with more expensive toys.

SORRY BUT my website does no longer exist. Use these links below to buy my FOUR FULL LENGTH VIDEO $10.00 (approx £7.50) directly via Fastspring
1.a
’ Better Handwriting for Adults’
http://sites.fastspring.com/jwrenimages/product/betterhandwritingforadults
2.
‘More Handwriting for Adults’
http://sites.fastspring.com/jwrenimages/product/morehandwritingforadults
3.
‘Introduction to Chalkboard Art’
http://sites.fastspring.com/jwrenimages/product/introductiontochalkboardart
4.
‘More Chalkboard Art’
http://sites.fastspring.com/jwrenimages/product/morechalkboardart

I have also written a book ‘Cursive Handwriting for Adults’
published by Ulysses Press and can be purchased from:

AMAZON UK

AMAZON USA

My FACEBOOK Page https://www.facebook.com/Johnnealartist

I play guitar and write songs and have written about 14 songs for the local BBC radio station. I run a weekly (weakly) evening Acoustic session at a local pub and have been doing so for 14 years now. I also started an afternoon acoustic session in a quite large cafe in Nuneaton. Both premises were former songwriting clients of mine.

Much of the music I use on this channel is taken from epidemicsound.com free to use on Youtube for a reasonable monthly fee, and sometimes I suffer you with my own music.

Gear that I use:
DJI Mavic Mini 3 Drone.
Iphone 13Pro for camera, generally front facing so I can see myself in frame. Super quality especially if I keep the lens clean.
Go Pro11
Gimble is a Q2 Smooth by Zhiyun, I ought to use this more often because it was expensive.
Canon G7mk2
Sony IC recorder

Omnidirectional Lavalier Microphone

Rhode videomic to do voice over on computer
Video editing with Final Cut Pro X
Polarduck Mini Tripod for mobile phone. This is so good and under £10.00 I bought two.
Lamcou bendy leg tripod
Tall Tripod is a Velbon CX 540
Mono pod is a Manfrotto Compact MMC3-02 and is very useful for getting high angles that look like low flight drone shots and so easy to carry on my bike along with the mini tripod.

My bike is a e28 Estarli electric bike.

https://www.estarli.co.uk/

Money from ARTWORK SOLD will go to the MONA FOUNDATION
for details see https://www.monafoundation.org

I am a follower of the Bahá’i Faith and some of my philosophical ideas may show through in comments that I make, but, by and large, I’ll not make direct reference to my beliefs.
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/131048357093583
See www.bahá’i.org

To hear my Bahá’i INSPIRED SONGS, (and others) GO TO:
https://soundcloud.com/jrwren/sets/bahai-inspired-songs

I also enjoy gardening but lay no claims to have any expertise, and you might catch me out in the countryside of Warwickshire and nearby Leicestershire on a walk with my wife or on a bike ride.

Please comment below to inform further plans for my vlogs. I’d love to hear from you. If you don’t you will just get whatever bubbly ideas float to the surface of my slightly muddled elderly mind.

Hello everyone it’s John Neil here it’s Thursday the 12th of October 2023 and I am going to do some calligraphy with a Brush for your information the canvas I’m going to use is uh a regular artist’s canvas quite a thick one I have used thinner stuff before now you know Calico but I find it’s a little bit flimsy but this is good uh ordered it off Amazon I’ll leave you the link um

It’s only about £10 for just over a meter square of it so I’ve got three pieces from it this is a small piece two of these and one larger one which be working on um the brush I’m going to use is this/ in that’s 12 mil

Brush and the ink I’m going to use I’ve gone for green for reasons I know and it’s the posterman letter Zig Postman pen chalkboard ink it’s an acrylic ink uh so anything similar to this so make sure it’s well shakeing up hang on before do anything

Else if you get acrylic ink on clothes it won’t come out so it’s vitally important to put um some cover on I’ll put me best shirt on for you for the intro but I’m going to cover it up with this apron it’s better yes the ink

Green for those of you may or may not be interested I’m going to uh do a little commission for somebody who wanted a healing in prayer writing out on canvas to hang on the wall it’s going to be a wall hanging rather like this one at the

Back of me which you can’t see had of focus I know but um that’s the whole point so I’ve actually um hemmed the edge here as you can see there and the top will take a stick going through it I’ll just poke a pencil so you can see the sort of thing I’m

Talking about so that will take a stick through so I can hang it and the important bit is that it is only as long as well it’s longer than I want so as I write on the the piece I’m going to use as I go down the bottom isn’t finished

Off yet so I hopefully would end up you know around here on this piece and then you can fold the bottom up accordingly um so basically let s plenty of space at the bot bottom to work down the canvas um and not run out of space which is uh

Always a bit of a problem I’m going to not use any lines I often find if I draw lines on which is could be important to do um uh they’re difficult to get off um I can’t wash them off if it’s pencil or chalk or whatever it could be a bit

Awkward so I’m not going to use that um I I’ve done a piece here just to test it out and you can see there a fairly uh straight line so I’ve managed quite well and I think I can get the um sometimes the uh spacing is better if you do it sort of

Freehand okay now I’ve um also got to work out what sort of style to use there’s either that style which is sort of regular uh script or this the one which is back there which is more of uh uh it doesn’t have all the flicky

Bits on think I’m going to go for that one I quite like it I’ve looked at them both um for those who may not know green if we go a bit hippie for a minute green is a sort of a healing color so I thought why not use green the Green’s

Nice and dark and um opaque works very well got plenty of it so I’m going to use that um to put the ink onto the brush what I’m going to do is just milk the ink into the container and I’ve used quite a heavy one I was using a lighter

One before but I’ve got to um load the brush properly so I’ll dip the brush in and then scrape off and that is just the right amount if I just dip it in and lift it out that’s too much ink on the brush you’ve got to sort of get that

Right right let’s get set up and um do some lettering this is the canvas I’m going to use um it’s fairly long as you can see it goes right down to there and it’s that wide and to get the layout right and the canvas is worth about 5 quid mustn’t

Think about this too much otherwise you never get started this is the whole hold of the prayer um the first line thy name is my healing I’ve practiced on the back on on on here so that hasn’t come through as you can see so I can use the the back of these

For testing things out that’s the distance it’s going to be which on this finished canvas will be absolutely fine and looking at I think I’m going to go for that style as well it’s the brush that does the work all the way through I’ll just I know you’ll see see this as

I do it but you know it’s the brush that just does it and you hold the brush nice and steady um at that angle consistently all the way through and as you go along and come off you get these various marks and when you go on

You get a thin off to a thick and it’s holding it in that position you’ll probably notice my fingers rarely move it’s most of this is done actually with my my arm it’s just like this my wrist doesn’t move either it’s all with the arm so there’s consistency about what we

Do okay right let’s chew on it um not sure whether to do the the first capital T as something special I’m just going to have a practice so here this is what I do for a practice or a a test out so this will just test the Ink’s good and

The brush is good so instead of just doing like that I might do this and then th name would go like this what do you think I think so I can always add to some of this later on you know do little bits here and there just to help it on

Its way for instance you can do extra pieces up there which I do think that’s quite nice too let me just try that on here which I did previously so where the brush is gone over once it sort of goes slightly thin so you do a

Second got to make sure you get it dead on you get a sort of a a shadowy top to it maybe it didn’t stand out it stands out there quite well so let’s try that capital T once more see what else I can do maybe that just to make that first one a

Little bit more distinctive prefer that I think to that just add a bit more to it yep do that no more need that there is that overdoing it right just bite the bullet and get on with it [Applause] for Well now the music’s finished I’ll just chip in with a comment here you’ll notice I’m always holding the brush at the same angle so the down Strokes roughly speaking are thick and the side Strokes at a diagonal are thin so you get this thin thick effect which comes

Out in the lettering so the brush really does the work for you I’ll also say that uh if you’ve ever noticed and wonder what it is my watch um is monitoring what the uh iPhone is seeing through its camera which is very useful when you’re trying to do this

Work and film it at the same time another point to make of course is that with the brush you cannot push it up the canvas you’ve got to drag it down every time so you notice the letter e that I did is done in uh two movements

From the top down each time the shame with that letter O there look there’s the e [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] oh One or two things to show you before I finish um let’s just take the ink again and put it into this fairly substantial pot as I said before it’s it’s so that I can get the brush and clean it off without tipping it over um couple of things here uh first of

All um if you get this in your clothes uh or you want to get it off particularly off glass and stuff like that sodium carbonate is what you use not sodium bicarbonate sodium carbonate it’s called washing soda in the UK it’s very very useful it’s quite an old age

REM remedy for clean in and it it breaks down this acrylic ink really quite quickly but if you do get it on your clothes do that straight away and this brush I’m using here look is a rigger brush I suppose the about 25 uh millimet long but it’s a very long

Thin so you can this is the my testing back Strip by the way so I can do what I want on here um you’ll notice that um it makes a long simple line quite easy look you can almost get it dead straight and it holds the U ink for quite a long

Time too so what I did on this writing on the other board uh on the other uh piece what I did on the other piece was to put some flourishes on the end of these so I took all these end pieces and made them and you can take this

Round and it just it’s very easy to guide it around to make curly curly worly bits and when I come away from here I pretend it’s the the shadow side so the dark that back side of it and bring it around this way so it tape is in and then do

Whatever you feel I mean let’s say for instance I feel that this space needs filling here I could take the bottom of this n and the g if I want and um sometimes best to start over this side going that way sometimes nice to break just short there let’s just

Go and again I’m going to come this side um Can overdo this I will overdo this just because I’m telling I’m showing you what I can do but so I just feel as if the places need filling so I might take this L and take it over here shall I let’s do

That so let’s take the again start from the back of the letter there you can actually hold this quite vertically there you do need to practice but yeah it works quite well So eventually I’ve decorated all the other uh letters on the main piece that I’ve shown you doing

This I think I’ve not overdone it I’m quite happy with it well there you go um it’s not of the nature of bahis to uh confess not allowed to do that to anybody but I will say that I didn’t actually do all this prayer on the canvas because I ran out of

Space um but you don’t doesn’t bother you the last line was thou verily art the all bounded for the all knowing the all wise it should be on the end of that but doesn’t matter too much right um thank you very much for watching um I did do one or two other calligraphy

Pieces as you may have seen um and I met may do some more videos about them if that’s what you want you’ll need to get back to me and tell me if there any other questions either about the calligraphy or the B Faith please um mention them below and we’ll see what we

Can do for you okay thank you very much for watching and uh oh by the way um over 900 followers on this channel which is very nice I’ve said before my old old Channel which had calligraphy and sign w uh am massed 18,000 followers and it’s still climbing

And yet there’s nothing going on it um but this one uh just over 900 so if you do want to subscribe it’ll do you good so there you go okay thank you very much for watching and you will see me next time okay bye-bye