Augustus Mosaic Lettering

#roman #mosaic #lettering #augustus

Adding letters to mosaics tells us something rather disconcerting about levels of literacy amongst craftsmen in the Roman Empire. The designer of this mosaic had excellent layout skills but his letter forms suggest he was not a scribe himself and probably recited letters and got a scribe to write them down for him and his team to copy. 

The letter forms are more like written text preserved on papyri than the forms we see on carved inscriptions and the last 2 letters ... whether thats a delibarate abbreviation or some one running out of the right tesserae color ...

Augustus in Roman Inscriptions

AUGUSTUS IN ROMAN INSCRIPTION

#epigraphy #roman #augustus #typography

Here are two more examples of the word Augustus appearing in Roman Inscriptions.

Note the use of abbreviations. Imp for  Imperator 

Note the crisp sharp lettering!

AUGUST and Inscriptions

#August #inscriptions #roman #typography

The inspiration and model for all those crisp sharp Roman fonts are plaques like this one.

Note the Roman V functioning as a vowel and the balanced space on either side of the T and the descending ratio of letter sizes from Large at top to smaller at the bottom.

The Augustales were a body of priests responsible for offerings to Augustus as a Deity.

The one letter that doesnt quite fit and rises up, the t of et before Iulianus may be an error someone forgetting the t in et but the carver has echoed the style and weight of the T in the top line so it emphasizes the I in Iulianus. 

More Augustan Inscriptions and lettering next time. 

Clouds and Hills Demo

#inkscape #demo #landscapes

Making Clouds and Hills

You can use the same basic open arc shape to make clouds and hills.

Use the circle tool to make an open arc. You can leave it smooth and just add a gradient or you can add water color gouache ink or other filters depending on the degree of transperency you want.

Remember you can use handles to change the angle of the gradient and flip or rotate the object.

I also used that basic shape to make clouds by shaping the color and rotating and flipping.

The hills are about 3 or 4 objects. US DUPLICATE. 

 I have only half finished this to show you the layering.

Unless you're aiming for hills retreating into distance put the lightest objects on the top.

I'm probably going to add at least two more objects to blend the tones.

Oh since I don't own a tablet all this was done using a touchpad on my laptop and 

COMBINING INKSCAPE FILTERS AND TOOLS 

Unlike traditional watercolor on paper I don't have to stretch paper or wait for paint to dry or worry about paint dripping or the wet into wet blending not working though if you have water media experience especially with transperent watercolor that helps.