3-D Sign Painting in One Page Flat

[KaiduOrkhon]

3- Dimensional Sign Painting in One Page Flat.

 

(Give me a sign : )

Copyright 1985 & 2009 by K. B. Robertson

 

Oil portrait artists with many accomplishments in their history are natural sign painters. A deliberate scientific standard of the shapes, sizes, and impartations of various painting brushes - the hundreds of rote hand grips, positions and movements, is more the fort of a sign painter, than that of a portrait artist - the two otherwise having much in common. Each learns her/his mediums and vehicular techniques toward graphic, often colorful execution. Each brush stroke consciously aimed at publicly redeeming itself; at face value. The summarised image may communicate in pictures or letters and words, or a balanced ensemble of all of the above...

 

Even a portrait artist may innocently deny that any effort to communicate with others is being made, but, anything that is deliberately - or inadvertently - created by human beings, is categorisable as 'artifact'. A man-woman made picture is consciously foreordained to be seen by others. Man made letters, words and other symbols are made to be seen, read and interpreted by others. Such are the trappings and motivations, the disciplined practices - the arts - of portraiture and sign painting. Every artist, certainly including a writer, wants attention. It's only human: art - and science...

 

The delivery system of any graphic activation is in its paints and inks and theri applicators. The 'delivery' itself wielded in the selection, mixing and convergent execution of same. In matters of preparation the brushes and paints/inks are decided - the graphic mediums, then there remains the execution - the brush strokes; the balanced or unbalanced, poetic or discordant visual, spatial - as well as cerebral - message...

 

The Sign

 

The alphabet is 26 letters expressing an infinite number and quality of messages, in an infinite number of ways. Any sign tells you something about itself; as well as it's integral message, designed to send you elsewhere, the sign exists in the objective space it physically occupies, and the subjective space it puts you in. Not the interval between the sign and what it communicates: a well done sign will put 'harmony' in that interval. Music broadcasters call this 'a good seque ('seg-way').

 

A good sign is visually curved and linear music. One may play and 'rhyme' it any way one wishes. What would you like people to 'hear'?

 

As in any grand or minor concerto, in an environ of harmony, the smallest mistake will call attention - 'disharmony' - to itself. This is a strong indicator of a generally well done as well as 'flawed' sign.. The more well balanced and appealing it is, the easier it is to 'be drawn to' whatever discordancies may accompany it.

 

Signs are much like blades of grass - some are more perfect than others. Master sign painters are usually over fifty, and fewer numbers of these might acknowledge 'a perfect sign'. On a scale of one through ten, one does see a lot of number nine signs. A walk down any mainstreet in the civilised world will reveal 9.9 rated signs everywhere. We take them for granted - like skyscrapers, arched bridges and buildings; the Parisian Arc De Triumph.

 

COCA COLA

 

Sentence structuring, in and out of context; the semantic and physical structuring of whatever written-symbolic communication: the signal en toto. The graphic - hand painted, caligraphically lettered - sign. A high, deliberate or inadvertant non verbal, hand made communication; not necessarily preoccupied with aesthetic harmony or the appeal of 'balance': sometimes being disharmonious, 'just to get your attention'; often breaking in and out of harmony, also to get your attention.

 

 

One, two, three, four and more dimensional signs. Uniform - complimentary - thickness and width ('Weight') of all used letters; remaining comparatively uniform. Regular - not necessarily dogmatic - spacing between all letters and words. Uniform height and WIDTH of all used letters; including correct selection and creation of marginal spacing, formatting, and outside framing. Oh yes; even 'gravitational drop'. All of this - and much more - happening, or failing to happen, deliberately or unintentionally, in any sign.