ALPHA VARIANTS - ONE

 ALPHA VARIANTS

#alpha #letterA #historyofalphabet #alphabet 

The letter A has come a long way from being an Egyptian hieroglyph and a Canaanite pictograph to the modern vowel symbol it is today.

 

 

One of its greatest leaps was the shift from representing the glottal stop to being a vowel in Greek.

However its form had several variants differing in various polises and whether it was written in papyrus or  engraved on stone . The bull kept its horns for a few centuries !

Don't forget to click and scroll back and forward to see more posts on A and Alpha! 

A on paper

#paper #texture #inkscape #filter #julievaux

This weeks experiment changing the colors just slighting and then adding just one filter to try to get an ink soaked into paper effect. It seems to work best if you change the color to a VERY dark brown!

I've taken the epaper oblong I created for the bottom layer and saved it at the bottom of the image for you to crop off and reuse. Again if you're looking for a paper effect combining Texture with Distort works with most colors in #inkscape

If you want a smoother texture you'll probably have to export to #gimp and do more edits.

Start in Inkscape though. I 've seen some small scale textures made in Gimp that work on web pages for banners or small areas but used for a complete a4 page or larger ...

A matter of A's

A MATTER OF A'S

VECTOR VERSUS RASTER ILLUSTRATED

( you might need to save the images and clcik to enlarge them in some browsers?)

Raster versus Vector is less on an issue on a small scale but if you're doing posters or capitals you probably should do your lettering in a vector program even if you plan to import the file into another program depending on what filters and plugins you may be using for the final edit?

This first A is a png saved from a svg file created in Inkscape an Open Source Vector program.

(Hey I can't afford Illustrator and Open source programs are also far less of a processing hog

though I do have a tipjar if you want to help me buy a copy? )

Notice the crisp clear edges ?

Now here's another png file but created in a raster program GIMP

Though if I'ld made the A's much smaller you probably wouldnt have noticed the differences.

Finally here's a jpg converted from that png raster file

Still crisp and sharp but a jpg saved from the raster png isn't.

Try it yourself!

Why? Cos its the best way to test whether your fonts work at a larger size.

Likewise try testing ornamental fonts at smaller sizes too!

Probably its safest if you're creating lettering you want to use for both print small and large and the web also to make the first file 150 to 200 dpi unless you're doing a really really BIG object.

A first post for this blog!

The Letter A is the first letter in most alphabets  and alphabets are one of the many topics that will feature in this blog. Not just the standard Roman alphabet. I'll also be discussing other scripts, signs, symbols, and glyphs, along with typography and calligraphy, and techniques for editing and creatng them by traditional media or computer. If you take pleasure in letters join me?!

The Big A image is a modified letter from a Cursive Font with blur and drop shadow added several times and blended to create a wider heavier yet soft letter.

Perhaps considering the letter derives from an ancient ox's head symbol I should have given the image more points?

Now the image is uploaded I can see a few spots where I should have perhaps used the Smudge tool before I added the shadow and blur? What would you have done readers?

The initial schedule for this blog will be weekly posts. Join me!