Online Workshop

David Jones: Drawn and Painted Letters
with Ewan Clayton

Limited to 20 students

The neo-primitive letterforms of Anglo-Welsh artist and poet David Jones has enthralled calligraphers for decades, but what is the essence of Jones’s unique approach to lettering that can be captured? There is no better interpreter and guide to the lettering of David Jones than calligrapher and scholar Ewan Clayton, who—like Jones—has roots in the Ditchling arts and crafts community.

 
 


David Jones was a painter and a poet. For the last two decades of his life, drawn-and-painted lettering formed a major strand in his work. Subsequently his naïve inscriptions reshaped our appreciation of the roman letterform. Turning away from the splendours of the Imperial Roman capital he valued the naïve and simple work of very early and later Roman history, the art of the catacombs and the ordinary people. In this class Ewan will share Jones’s approach to letter-making and arrangement. He approached inscription-making with the eye of a painter and some original methods of composition. But the point of our time together is not to directly imitate him but, like him, to make our own relationship with these classical forms.

The first class will cover basic approach and arrangement, and the second will explore what it means to look at an inscription as a painting, serifs and fine-tuning. The classes are live and there will also be a short pre-recorded video to watch in the week between the two Saturday classes.

Watch a trailer for David Jones’s book, In Parenthesis, published by the Folio Society, with cover design and calligraphic illustrations by Ewan Clayton:

 


Dates: January 23 & 30, 2021 (an additional recorded video will be presented midweek)
Time: 10 am to 4 pm Eastern Standard Time (New York time)
Price: $150
Max Enrollment: 20 people


THIS CLASS HAS SOLD OUT


Cancellation policy: A link to the online class will be emailed at least 72 hours before the first day of class. No refunds will be issued after January 18, 2021

 
 

 

MATERIALS LIST

  • Layout Bond (not smaller than 11 x 17 inches or A3) for sketching

  • You may want a sheet of better smooth paper for finished work

  • Pencils (we will begin with these, HB is good)

  • Pencil sharpener

  • Eraser, pen wipe, water container

  • Ruler

  • A few pens in the size you like to work in (ie either small, medium or large)

  • Pointed watercolour brushes, various sizes are useful 

  • Your choice of gouache (at least two) and a plate/palette for mixing it

  • Any non waterproof ink—your choice

  • David Jones himself often used white paint for touching up letters. Dr Martin’s white bleedproof ink could be useful but not essential.


 
 
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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Ewan Clayton enjoys working with his fellow calligraphers, whatever their level of experience, from beginners to experts. He grew up near Ditchling, Sussex, home to the calligrapher Edward Johnston, and studied and taught at the Roehampton Institute with Ann Camp. Today Ewan is part-time Professor in Design at the University of Sunderland. In the rest of his time he teaches from his studio at Brighton, Sussex, makes commissions, curates exhibitions, and writes about calligraphy. His history of writing, The Golden Thread was published in 2013. In 2016 he was a finalist in the Illustrator of the Year Awards for his work on the Folio Society’s edition of David Jones’s long poem In Parenthesis.