articles/Printing/Making-Your-Mark-page10
by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2015
Developing Your Autograph
Assuming that you do not have a natural ability to produce a nicely flourished signature as an autograph, it pays to take a look at some of the resources on the web including fonts that you might wish to imitate. Copperplate or roundhand writing is an old standard that has come to signify neat, pen-written handwriting. Correctly done, copperplate should have a constant letter slope of 55° (normally). On You-Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulY35OazzhQ you can see the word Aria being written - it takes 3m 48s of wonderful skill, well worth a watch. Copperplate is not quick! There are special copperplate nibs which are cranked so that the scribe can see more easily; they are available left handed and right handed.
The resource at http://www.cynscribe.com/ is truly massive and well worth browsing. If you like calligraphy as an art form you might look no further than the website of Hassan Massoudy, a wonderful calligrapher in the best traditions of the Far East.
We went to the Adobe fonts utility on CC and pulled out 12 copperplate fonts written with the example text 'Mike McNamee' to see how it looks. Such an exercise should give you plenty of ideas to try - all you then need to do is practise until your coordination skills enable you to repeat it time after time which is a lot easier said than done!
Why go to all this trouble?
This is a valid question; all that is set out above costs both time and money. The response is unequivocal - if you don't value your work highly and don't think it worth all this trouble, why should you expect anybody else to do so? All that is set out above adds to the perceived value of your prints; it reflects the care taken in production and a meticulous attention to detail - one day it might just pay off big time, although if it does the chances are your descendants or some art dealers are more likely to be the recipients!
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