Getting in a slow hurry
As I continue to relate my Health Center sign experience it would be wise to interject a few pertinent facts to avoid giving you to a false impression. When you see photos compiled into a short piece as in this blog, it is easy to assume that all of this work came about at once or within a very short period of time. The truth is this project came to fruition over a period of several years. First the sketches were created and estimates given. Some of these hand drawn roughs even saw publication within the pages of SignCraft Magazine before Westminster Oaks' Shannon Sauls and I actually moved forward with the production of the cafe signs themselves.
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A snippit of a page from an article I wrote about quick-sketches featuring the roughs.
Those pieces for Canopy Oaks and Garden View came first (shown in part I) and were made in secession with several months in between. She was very gracious to give me the breathing room that required to pull these off. I was experimenting with several techniques that were new to me, Sauls demonstrated an unusual level of confidence in us. I assured her that her patience would be rewarded by something special.
Cafe of the Friends (According to an internet French to English translation site)
Cafe Des Amis's sign was for the last of the eateries. The client had shown me a painting of a french, side- walk cafe and requested that the direction of Amis's design be based upon that object of art. I took the dark blues and brick reds and incorporated them into my design. Over the top very opulent decor was envisioned. What follows is a peek into how we pulled off this piece.
The main feature of this piece was to be the decorative frame. This runs against my nature as sign-painter making any part of a sign more interesting than it's message. The frame was not off the shelf it was a custom design start to finish. A machine carved piece of 1/2" sheet PVC. Then finished with a specialty paint which has a high content of metal ground into it. While the paint is still wet a acidic wash it sprayed on to it creating an actual patina.
Creating production files for the CarveWright machine can be simple or as complicated as the designer wishes to go. Above: a hand drawn half face was rendered then scanned. The scan was imported into Adobe Illustrator document. This scanned drawing would serve as a guide that vectored lines would be painstakingly placed over. Once the half face was completed the lines would be duplicated and mirrored for the other half (no sense in re-inventing the wheel on a symmetrical design). The vectored shapes were assigned gray scaled fills with special attention places upon gradients.
The CarveWright Designer Program has the unique ability to take a gray scaled image and assign different carving depths to the graduations. For the finished file the deeper cuts were the darkest grays, the lighter shades remain closet to the highest plane of the PVC. Shown below: The file used and a photo of the carved components after they were removed from the machine.
For the love of the brush
We finally leave the high tech portion and return to my realm.
The type face that was selected was Atkinson's French Condensed. Type face may be actually misleading because it was a sign-painters alphabet not necessarily used in this form for the printing press.
This Alphabet was pulled from Frank H. Atkinson's master work, "Atkinson" Signpainting Up To Now. Originally published in 1909. It has remained a wealth of information and an inspiration for more than a century. It is a window into sign-painting's past. Much has been lost, forgotten and shamefully abandoned merely for the sake of speed.
A close-up of the painted portion of Amis' panel shows a crackle effect. This antique texture was developed by a personal friend of mine, Mark Fair of Montgomery, Al.
Mark was the first president of Creative SignMakers of America. His work has been featured in trade magazines and major motion pictures. The link below will take you to an article featuring his crackle technique which appeared in Signs Of The Times.
Creating the cafe and bistro signs for Westminster was a terrific experience. It allowed me to move further towards an understanding of dimensional sign-work. Including: layering, carving, sculpting and some specialty painting effects. I do hope that the little extras are brightening the days of the Health Center's residents which was everyone's intent.
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