The Daily Ampersand Project: Day 2

Today's ampersand is Gill Sans, slightly taken over by the swirl disease, in coloured pencil.

For yesterday's ampersand and an explanation of what this is all about, click here.

The Daily Ampersand Project: Day 1

Today's ampersand is ITC Baskerville italic, in pencil. Crisp and simple, good way to kick off the project :)

Read about the Daily Ampersand Project here.

The Daily Ampersand Project

Since leaving Uni I haven't really started any new projects. I've done lots of drawing here and there but now I think it's time to embark on something with weight and that has structure, and is something I can do everyday and stick to it.

This idea originally started as a Font Book - I wanted to create a small handmade book which included all 26 letters, handdrawn, from 26 of my favourite/most interesting looking fonts. I still may do that, one day. But last night it came to me (I always think of stuff at night, gift and a curse) that this might be more interesting if it just focussed on one letterform - my favourite of which is the Ampersand.* Has been ever since I discovered it in year 5 or something - all my prose at school was filled with '& then jack & jill went to the shops & they met sam & sue', which of course is terrible grammar, improper use of the ampersand, and would mean I got red circles all over my stories. But I loved writing that letter so much! So swirly. I was the only one out of my friends who could do it without it going fat and lopsided.

*I also really like the letter Y a lot, it was a tough call.

So I thought about it, and there are so many crazy variations of ampersands in all the typefaces that I could fill a whole book of them. So this is the plan...

• Every day, draw one ampersand. They will be hand drawn/traced from an actual real font, or taken from a photograph of any ampersands I find in the real world, or they will be designed by me.
  
• I have given myself no limitations on the medium - pencil, biro, collage, paint, stencil, anything.
• My limitations are that I must not use a computer to create the ampersands, save for scanning the finished piece in.
• They are going straight into a nice new clean moleskine sketchbook, not a handmade book, which is slightly smaller than A4 - no drawing on a seperate piece of paper and sticking in. Unless it's a collage piece.
• Every day I will scan it in and post it on this blog.
• I am setting a target of 30 ampersands - 30 days, starting from today (15th October). If I want I might do more, but no less than 30.

The History of the Ampersand: Taken from wikipedia, click here for more.

The symbol is a ligature of the letters in et, Latin for "and".

The word ampersand is a corruption of the phrase "and pe eminti and", meaning "and [the symbol which] plus this [is] and". The Scots and Scottish English name for & is epershand, derived from "et per se and", with the same meaning. Traditionally, in English-speaking schools when reciting the alphabet, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," "&" and, at one point, "O") was preceded by the Latin expression "pe eminti" (Latin for "plus this"). Also, it was common practice to add at the end of the alphabet the "&" sign, pronounced "and". Thus, the recitation of the alphabet would end in: "X, Y, Z and per se and." This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into common English usage by around 1742.

The modern italic type ampersand is a kind of et-ligature that goes back to the cursive scripts developed during the renaissance. After the advent of printing in Europe in 1455, printers made extensive use of both the italic and Roman ampersands. Since the ampersand's roots go back to Roman times, many languages that use a variation of the Latin alphabet make use of it.

I find that quite interesting, I had never really thought of where it came from. While researching this project, I wanted to see if anyone else out there had done anything similar to this; I didn't want to recreate a project that had already been done. There are a few ampersand projects out there but none exactly like this.

Existing Ampersand Projects I have found:

Students from Bath Spa Uni took part in a project to design their own ampersands. They then screen printed them onto t-shirts and took photos. They look pretty damn awesome if you ask me! This was found at an Ampersand Blog, http://ampersand.gosedesign.net/.

That blog is great for anything to do with ampersands - tattoos, photos, user designed ones, lots of great stuff. And the ampersand they have at the top of the site is one of my favourites - Baskerville 169 Italic, or a variation on that:

Which may just be my first ampersand of the project - kicking things off in a flamboyant way :)

The last project I found is by M.Finley Designs, a final year american uni project where the ampersands will be screenprinted. Sounds like a really great project; there's no images of it on that site, but on his Flickr Page there's a good selection:



An important part is what to call this project. I tried to think of a really exciting name, and very nearly called it The 27th Letter Project. (It's on wikipedia - apparently the ampersand is known as the 27th letter of the alphabet) But I thought, that's a bit ambiguous, so I've gone for The Daily Ampersand Project. I might change it, it feels a bit dull.

So i've started my first one - i'm off to an interview and visit my grandparents so I will finish it tonight and post it here. They will all have the 'daily ampersand project' tag.

All Daily Ampersands can be found if you click here.

Previous work of mine to do with ampersands can be found here.

Cakey Bakey: Choc Chip Cupcakes with Fudge Frosting

It's national chocolate week! So to celebrate I made the most chocolatey cupcakes in existence. Be warned - these are not for people who utter that insane phrase 'Oh, it's far too chocolatey for me...' Personally I can't understand that - I have never tasted anything that is 'too' chocolatey. There is no such thing! You crazies.

But for those of you who appreciate chocolate, these are for you. Use GOOD quality chopped chocolate or choc chips, the darker the better. Dark dark dark.

Fairly simple, it's just the frosting that can take a while - I so nearly ate all the cupcakes before I'd even put the frosting on!

This recipe is from the amazing book by Elinor Klivans - The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook. Buy it from amazon. It's full of recipes all about chocolate chips - there's some brilliant cookie recipes in there. Do it now.

Here's one I ate earlier.

Hopefully this will be up on Recipe Look later, as I'll email it in.

For my apple & cinnamon muffin recipe, click here.

For all my posts about recipes, including my illustrated recipe book, click here.

These illustrations are mine, no nicking without asking!

Coveting: Simon Cook's Christmas Cheat Sheets

I saw these and thought they were brilliant. Simon Cook is a very talented illustrator, but also a genius in my books for inventing these 'christmas cheat sheets', which is his "attempt to solve the age old problem of buying clothes for your better half at Christmas time... So basically you fill out one and give it to your boyfriend/girlfriend (or whoever you're expecting a present off), or get them to fill out one for you so you don't blow a surprise by asking for a particular."

Pretty damn simple, and simply damn pretty too:

Clicky for bigger.

This is the girls version - there is also the boys version too. Here's a few close ups:

haha, ring size. Won't be needing that.

I love the retro typography and the really limited colour use, feels very 50s and vintage and I like that. It also has that screenprinted feel which makes it seem very personal and tailored.

I really want to use it myself but don't have anyone to give it to =/ Save parents. And they never buy me clothes. They know better than that.

Great idea though. Found via Drawn!

You can read and see more about Simon Cook aka Cookie over at his website and blog, which is full of tasty things like:

and

and

Beautiful.

All images are copyright to Simon Cook of course. Chuh.

SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution

"A major exhibition staged at London's Somerset House in Autumn 2009, SHOWstudio: Fashion Revolution is a retrospective of nine years of online innovation, invention and creation. Based around the themes of 'Process', 'Performance' and 'Participation', the exhibition showcases over twenty projects from SHOWstudio's archives alongside unique new films, artworks and live fashion shoots and events specifically devised for this groundbreaking exhibition."

This is an exhibition that I don't want to miss. It runs until 20th December, at Somerset House which is at the Embankment Galleries. There's photographic exhibitions, installations, live fashion shows and live projects to participate in too, like this interactive sculpture where you can draw on Naomi online. Quite fun. And this, called 'Taking more Liberty's' which says nothing except '5 — 26 October 2009, Liberty's Window, Carnaby Street'. Which is.... today, in fact! Get down there. It must be some kind of interactive store window. Sounds very exciting.

There's loads of different exhibits, split into Process, Performance, Participation, and Fashion Film. They all sound quite interesting, but the one that has intrigued me the most is 'Fashion Film', which deals with "Film’s capacity to show clothing as it behaves on the body, together with its power to capture the spirit of fashion at a specific point in time, means that it is perfectly in tune with a generation of young fashion consumers who look beyond the printed page to experience their world instantly, live and online. Fashion film is perhaps showstudio.com’s single most important contribution to the changing face of how fashion is experienced."
Something which I agree with actually...


There's also a film from Alexander McQueen, called "Transformer: The Bridegroom Stripped Bare" looks quite intense and destructive:


Also "Past, Present and Couture" by Galliano, which is a series of photographs that "illustrates clearly the relationship between designer and model, and between designer and photographer, to inspire and direct the shot.":

There's also a behind the scenes film of the shoot as well.

It all seems slightly 'the art behind the fashion' to me, not that that's entirely a bad thing, so I need to check it out properly before I make any judgements. Tickets are £5 but Topshop's Inside-Out Blog is giving out a code to get another ticket free when you book online. Nice.

So hopefully I can pop down to London soon and check it out. Although I don't have any friends that care about fashion down here. Could be a problem. Exhibitions with no-one to discuss things with are a bit dull =/

New drawings: Before the flowers die.

I got sick of staring at a screen all day so took a break from the job hunting to enjoy the autumn sunshine in the garden. The flowers are having their last stand before the cold really hits so I thought I'd better get out there before most of them disappear.

My mum's garden is so pretty, it's one of my favourite parts of coming home.

The last one is my favourite; I love drawing roses. I think I'd like to photocopy this and work into it, maybe making a pattern out of it. I can just see that being on a cushion, with some more twisty stems and flowers. Hmmm. Anyway, this rose was definitely on it's way out, looking a bit curly and faded now. I hate how everything dies in autumn.

I'm going to get back into my 'a drawing a day' promise, as it was going well until... busy-ness happened. I still haven't quite mastered the art of having a life AND a job AND pursuing illustration AND drawing for the fun of it yet. All in good time.