Calligraphy workshop with Denise Lach at Laval University's summer school in Perce

Denise Lach gave a calligraphy workshop on "Written Textures" organized by Laval University's summer school, Ecole internationale d'ete de Perce de l'Universite Laval, in Perce, QC, CA.

At the end of the 5-day course we worked on a personal project. I chose to explore writing tools, which I was able to find in my surroundings, such as stones and wood from the beach, seeds, fir cones, fir wood branches, toothpicks, a colapen or a pipette. I used the tools with regular black ink on white paper.

At this point, I was not interested in creating perfect letter shapes. Instead, I wanted to research the characteristics of each specific tool. The ways of manipulating a tool, such as scratching, stamping, using a soft or stiff hand, etc. can lead to very different results. Most tools are hard to control and random effects appear. This is just a small overview of the variety of tools that can be used for writing...

The project:

Wood branch:

Fir Cone:

Seed:

Pipette:

Fir tree branch:

Stone:

Wood:

Toothpick:

Colapen:

Denise Lach explains the use of some tools during the workshop: