by beatriceotto | Nov 23, 2018 | blogophyte bulletin, think ink
One of the foundation stones of building a new website is the choice of fonts. As with colour selection, I look for a double whammy: a font (or colour) that has the visual impact echoing the character of the site, and a name to match. Choosing for meaningful names...
by beatriceotto | Nov 23, 2018 | blogophyte bulletin, think ink
In developing a companion website dedicated to love of life and the joys of sharing it, I sifted thousands of script fonts to find one with the dancing kinetic energy I wanted. Spirit of Dance by Vera Holera won by a mile, and I have used it for the header text at...
by beatriceotto | Nov 2, 2018 | poetry mojo, think ink
Hand-written notes and journals have a magic to them. Durrell is a favourite poet and his house in Greece was as close to the coast as you can be without getting your feet wet. Were these spatterings the voice of the sea telling him when he had a fine turn of phrase,...
by beatriceotto | Jul 13, 2018 | think ink, you got mail
Keats’ letters are treasures – he is every bit as fine a correspondent as he is a poet. Here he chides a friend for visually attractive but sprawlingly illegible hand-writing. ‘You must improve in your penmanship; your writing is like the speaking...
by beatriceotto | Feb 2, 2018 | paper shaper, think ink, writing & writers
Orlando enjoys a portfolio career, as a courtier, a diplomat, a landowner, a lady under house arrest, but throughout, he-she is also an aspiring writer, although it takes 300 years to finish a poem and to get near a publisher. Take heart if your work of art is taking...
by beatriceotto | Nov 22, 2017 | paper shaper, think ink, writing & writers
Having a love of ink, the variety of its hues and the names people give them, and the chunky inventive shapes of ink bottles, I was enchanted by this notion of making your own ink from berries and wine. I imagine blueberries, blackcurrants or elderberries would be...
by beatriceotto | Jul 7, 2017 | think ink, writing & writers
All laud to Labaume, going to such heroic lengths to write his journal. I will have to introduce this makeshift front-line writing into a story I’m concocting: gunpowder mixed with melted snow in the hollow of your hand, and your raven’s quill cut with the...
by beatriceotto | Jun 23, 2017 | metaphors, think ink, writing & writers
How many notebooks, journals or letters have been swept away by circumstance, carrying the minutiae of memory with them? Leigh Fermor used his to reconstruct his travels in his books and he clearly never got over this loss. Elsewhere he mentions a journal having been...
by beatriceotto | May 19, 2017 | think ink
On a joyous day walking around the Art Institute in Chicago, I spotted this beautiful, pristine celadon writing box with three ink wells and an underglaze moulded decoration of dragons amid clouds. An ever unfurling surprise to me is the simplicity and timelessness of...
