font business

SLOVENŠČINA

once, a congregation of mine talked about an event they would or needed to participate in. somebody had an idea to wear a kind of uniform, a t-shirt. we would print the name of their town on this t-shirt. well, we never printed more then model shirts as the technique used did not yield satisfactory results, and somehow our interest died off.

during the development of ideas that came to mind, one comprised letters only. because they happened to be quite rich. in fact, each letter was composed of several of them on top of one another. i decided to use a unique font - courier. all types - currier new, which is light, currier, a more substantial one. and courier bolded. i squeezed and pulled them however i judged it proper. for higher purposes, you do understand, don't you? there are four colours used randomly, one of them being white, the colour of the background, which makes a special effect.


another effect is got by positioning the new font tight. in this manner, the co sometimes the letters of the same colour overlap and please a eye in a special way. it is seen in the case of “or“ in black as shown above.

you can see yet another interestingly composed letter clicking here. you will find it as last in tomaž's name. with what is presented here, i don't think i will impress you as if inventing a revolutionary type, but i certainly find it able to catch your attention.

audacious thought? i'll never know, if you will not tell me. so, it's up to you.

advent concert poster

SLOVENSKO

looking for something on friday, i came across quite an old item for usual human lifespan even for an adventist. (i would be surprised if i would have not treated the topic of the adventist longevity in some of the future posts).

in this instance, advent is a given name to a singing group of a dozen people who tried to do their best to praise God singing about his love at church services and in public halls. advent was put together by renata bauer, whose leadership was surprisingly democratic.

i don't know how come that i helped with the illustration for our zagreb concert in 1989, the year gregor was born. (i don't think i did anything for those in skopje, macedonia and stuttgart, germany. anyhow, it was ibro who design the poster - this clearly being a detail - using my drawing.)

we never wore gowns, as you probably might conclude looking at the picture. our outfit simply symbolizes the kind of music we performed, and this enabled me to be as minimalistic as possible. nevertheless i kept some features of the choir members just for fun. i am dipicted in the left, vlado is next to me, the fifth is jolanda in her characteristic posture. sorry, renata, you happened to be out of picture, as you are sitting at the piano, of course.

are we going to have a reunion and perform together in full membership before it is too late?

anyhow, pleasant memories of the times, music, fellowship. youth?

it's all i've got

SLOVENSKO

several years ago i was honoured with with something special my church family had given me. they consented to help me organize an author event. several friends of mine played an important role in this project. first of all, the concert would never have taken place were it not for my philosopher-theologian-musician friend. during a short time gorazd spent with me in my district for his work experience, he needed to suffer, on several occasions, my piano playing. then he shocked me with a statement: “you should arrange for an author event. but you definitely should not play yourself.” (the latter part is an offence, obviously, so i use this moment to cordially invite him to the concert i will give after i will have been retired. :) the first item of the programme is almost completely mastered. and it is a nice j. s. bach prelude.) 

anyway, i must honestly admit that whatever i had written in 30 years (don't think it is very much, though. my pace is around a piece a year), would have still been in handwriting and quite disensembled at that. and now i have a 78 page book with nicely printed music. gorazd even gave a talk that evening, although he had just got the firstborn son. so thank you, buddy.

it never crossed my mind even remotely to organize an evening like that, much less to try to play there myself. (this retirement concert is a very new idea.) yes, i aim always for the highest quality. so it was lidija, my kindhearted christian sister, who played all the piano stuff except into my heart and the corresponding jingle, that was played by renata. i am certainly privileged with their gracious willingness and friendship.

zvjezdana and the maran-atha choir prepared vocal half of the numbers in a superb way. i am very grateful to everybody who contributed his or her talent and time and made the evening so nice. for instance, alenka, another specialist, the flute teacher, did not know me, an anonymous composer, and nevertheless she travelled from koper to maribor and back, which, the rehearsal and performance time included, took her half a day. and katarina and zvonko showed their giftedness as presenters. the idea with the whole project was that all we have, we got from God, from our parents, teachers and other people. so it is to everybody's enjoyment that we need to use these talents.

i would not talk about this if i would have not recalled the above index. i do not remember how this idea occurred to me, but the guitar was one of the instruments used during the concert. this design comprises more elements than just a border and a hole, but you must pay closer attention. the left rim of the instrument you must imagine. it would take too much time (i have already started today in two different ways, but it doesn't pay). besides, stretching your imagination is a good excercise, you know.

simplicity rules

SLOVENSKO

although i announced i would share my work, i do not want that st.ju.art is only what i do, but what i appreciate as well. so let me present you this time something i find most fascinating. i believe this plain drawing will occupy a very prominent position in my all-time-favourite list. its simplicity, the so natural flow of lines, the number of those representing the hairdo, the fact that there's no line on top and that the nose and the upper lip are not connected... it is, in my opinion, perfect. full stop.

it also carries memories, and somehow serves as a link. around 10 years ago it was penned by my firstborn son - tomaž - then 15 years old. one friday evening, when we had just begun the sabbath, tomaž drew a series of caricatures of the members of his family. i don't know what he thought of it then, or thinks of it today, but i clearly was attracted to this one instantly. and i asked it from him. that's why i can show it to you now.

the original drawing (some 1.5 x 3.5 cm) was created by a common blue ink pen and depicts his mum, of course. i have never claimed that what you see here is what i see every day in reality, though. :) i have used it as a desktop picture, a letter heading, and once printed it as a big welcome-home poster when mum was about to return from a trip.

anyway, i feared that the drawing could be lost and i scanned it in maruševec while pursuing my theology studies. it was a bitmap picture at the time, so my only intervention (apart from the obvious colouring) was that i made it a vector picture here.

  

it is splendid! i just love it! i'm proud of you, tomaž!

our loving father II

SLOVENSKO

have not yet figured out how to add music. sorry. any suggestion?

the next question the song puts is: who suspended the sky above? note, however, that this is the slovenian multisyllable translation, rendered back for you. the poet-pastor, who translated it for my wife reduced the lyrics into two stanzas, and had to chose from the images to use, picking those he could rhyme. so he took the earth, the sky and the stars.

the dynamic observed in the sky are, of course, ever changing clouds, sailing across the vast blue expanse. so it is self-evident that i used them. as you have probably noticed, i augmented the space for them a little bit. here i give you only a sample. the movement in the presentation is smooth, made up of 20 slides. but i have discovered now that the first four must go out, seeing that the number of beats to work with is 16.)

the other thing occurring in the sky is the light changing during the dawn and dusk. since the next act is the starry heavens, i prepared the way with the nightfall.

the clouds were scanned separately coloured in the same way and simply driven by. the black dots are impurities on the sheet of paper. the paint covers only the clean areas. and it never touches the line made by a marker, because, scratching the paper sprinkles small quantities of ink and the precise electronic readers detect them and leave them uncoloured. anyway, i find it artistic.

what about you? and, do you consider the representation of the changes in the colours of the twilight persuasive?

our loving father

SLOVENSKO

two and a half years ago an old laptop got retired from my use. the life goes on, but i still have valuable documents and fruits of my artistic endeavour. 

last night i copied some of these to my new computer. and i found an interesting unfinished presentation. it was conceived as a device to teach children a very nice song, but the old toshiba was not as able as laptops are today, and packed with 1010101 and the like. and you can not teach a song in soooo slooooow tempo. this is the principal reason the presentation was left undone. now, i got an urge to illustrate those two more lines. whatever happens, i will show you here some of the slides, and tell you how they were made.

i first drew a scene using a blue marker. i scanned it and inverted it in the openoffice.com draw. it can be, that i imported it into paintbrush directly. anyhow, this is where i added colours with the dropper tool. but before preceding to the coloured slides, let me note that the initial movement is an illusion of zooming out the scene to rivet the viewer to the screen. ambitious, ha? :) it is attained by stretching the drawing beyond the dimensions of the screen frame, and diminishing it in the next two steps to the right size.

although the song in the original very appropriately enumerates all the environments the life is found - who made ocean, earth and sky? - the slovenian song writer skipped the first element. (well, to translate the above verse into slovenian, one needs almost double number of syllables: 13 instead of 7) but if not starting with the water, as the biblical account begins, our illustration parallels the void and formless state of the planet before the creation by presenting the scene as if taken by night, which gives it the possibility of 'climbing' towards the last word in the first line - earth. (in slovenian the opening verse reads: who created [this grand] earth, with the parenthesis added here for metrical purposes)

the scene is than gradually illuminated, while the lyrics gives the answer to the question formerly put: God, our loving father. this answer is repeated in every even verse. and this is  how we conclude the first third of the stanza.

each of both slovenian stanzas comprises three questions and the same answer which is repeted even in the musical sense. if the song would be sung by two person alternately, with one asking and the other answering, the latter would sing the same thing three times. (next week, when you visit this blog, search for the music i plan to add as well; i recorded it on the electronic chimes (this is why i wished the children learn the song), a sound very similar to celesta, an instrument tchaikovsky (funny, is not ch enough? obviously the english spelling of his name came from french, the language of the russian nobility of old times) got from paris for his ballet nutcracker. it is heard in the dance of the sugar plum fairy. gorgeous indeed! the register, i mean. you will judge the music yourself.

well, i see that i ought to present you the the rest of the story in two other posts.

so long then.