Monday 4 February 2013

Undone



Last year I was asked to do a very interesting hand lettering job by Quercus. My lovely friend Cat Clarke is a Young Adult author and has written three amazing YA novels, all published by Quercus, called Entangled, Torn and Undone (it is the official launch of Undone tomorrow and Cat and I are going to Nando's beforehand so double celebration there).

So back to Quercus...Without giving too much away about the book, I was asked to hand-write a series of 12 letters that appear in Undone, in a style that suits a teenage boy with very neat writing. This is harder than it sounds and I wasted about 17 trees-worth of paper. I also had to work to a template and start the line again if I messed it up at any point, which obviously happened loads. And I had to use a fountain pen for a good quality of line for reproduction, and it obviously needed to be legible at all times.
The letters become increasingly distressing and there are lots of scribblings and crossings-out and good messy bits.

I highly recommend that you read this book. Cat is a brilliant writer, and she is also a bad influence whilst drinking champagne. Look out in the book for a really rubbish drawing of a lamb, and a line about how Kai's hand was hurting from writing all the letters. How very true that was! I had a claw for a hand for too long after I finished the letters.

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