Sunday, November 9, 2008

Initial Caps

Here are a couple of the initial capital letters that I (Jim) designed for The Hand of Dinotopia by Alan Dean Foster, with whom I’m currently traveling in North Africa. Initial caps are an old fashioned device in book design. I used them to open up chapters with little pictures.

6 comments:

Shane White said...

Black and white rarely gets the love, but I for one am a big fan.

Great stuff as usual.

=s=

Super Villain said...

i've always wondered, if the handwriting under some of the images in the diontopia books is done by hand? in the small photo to the left of the blog their is a photo of james doing what looks to be the same caligraphy that is in the books, if that is all written by hand that is insaine and i urge you to send gurney to the mental house....again,

haha! just kidding, but that would be amazingnly impressive if that writing in the book is all done by hand....

James Gurney said...

Yes, Wu-man, he did do all of the calligraphy For the roundhand, he used a steel nib in an oblique holder. As long as he doesn't drink too much coffee, his hand is good and steady..

Super Villain said...

haha, that is amazing! for a long time i looked and looked at that writing detail, i couldnt tell, and finally i decided that it was too perfect and had to be be a done with computer with a special font!

ko said...

These would make a great woodcut or linocut, curious if you have ever tried your hand at it block print making.

James Gurney said...

Ko, those are brush and ink, going for a woodcut look. I've tried scratchboard and lino, but not woodcut yet.