Second week in Holland, first one in KABK. Meet our group, t]m 14/15!

Photo by Erik van Blokland

We spend more time at school, but it’s not that busy yet. ATypI conference, most of the teachers are there. We’ve had some lessons though. Peter Verheul, writing with a flat brush. A tip from Peter, if you want to chose a right brush for writing, choose one with a long hair, like the one on the left.

Where to start? Start with drawing horizontal and vertical lines, brush should always be at 30 degrees angle. It’s better to write with water-colour, not ink. Can be Ecoline though. And practise, practise, practise.

After drawing lines you can start with letters. The rules are the same.

More tips from Peter, don’t hold your breath, when you are writing and try to work with your whole hand, not just wrist. Have breaks if you feel tired! For our break, we had an excursion to KABK’s silk print class.

Another lesson was from Paul van der Laan. We’ll be doing a revival project with him, I’ll tell more about it in the next post. For now, he showed us presentation with his works. He has a type foundry, boldmonday.com, founded in 2008 by him and Pieter van Rosmalen. Check out their works, they are just amazing! I made a couple of photos during the lecture, but it was dark, so the quality is not that good.

We had some lessons, we had some homework, but we also had a very warm thursday, so in the evening it was definitely time for a beach 🙂 The Hague has a very beautiful beach and dunes, so go there if you happen to be around.

Friday is an excursion day with Jan Willem Stas. We went to Museum Meermanno | House of the Book. Very close to the Academy, very good collection of books and type specimens, very beautiful garden.

Weekend — Amsterdam and doing homework. On Saturday we went to Unseen Photo Fair Amsterdam, the international photography fair focused on undiscovered photography talent and unseen work by established photographers. Lots of pictures!

Sunday evening — t]m girls’ evening. We are three this year. Heidi (Denmark), Minjoo (South Korea) and me. Made some kimbap (we call it sushi, but it’s not right — sushi is rice and fish) and did some calligraphy (of course).