Sign writing Course at Hepworth Wakefield
On a very wet Friday evening I took a 6 hour train journey from Devon up to Wakefield in Yorkshire. However tough the journey, I was determined to get there because I had a full weekend of learning to sign write!
The course took place at The Hepworth Wakefield, a gallery named for, and celebrating the work of, Barbara Hepworth, who was born in Wakefield and became famous as part of the St Ives School, working predominantly as a modernist sculptor. The building itself is lovely both outside and inside and won museum of the year in 2017. Not only are the galleries interesting but it also has a great café (which did a tasty Sunday roast) and a shop full of interesting books and souvenirs (https://hepworthwakefield.org/).
The Hepworth Wakefield
The signwriting course ran 10.30 – 4pm over 2 days at the weekend and was exhausting but totally worth it! The course was run by Steve Oxley, a very experienced signwriter and a great teacher, able to explain his art well and troubleshoot our mistakes! He has recently set up his own school of decorative art, based out of Stockport (https://www.schoolofdecorativeart.co.uk/) and there’s even a video of our first day at work here: https://www.facebook.com/schoolofdecorativeart/videos/741170772921092/.
Steve Oxley from the School of Decorative Art gets us started practising signwriting.
First up Steve got us standing at the boards practicing using the brushes and special enamel paint, along with our Mahl sticks (made from a piece of thick doweling with a piece of foam on the end). This was tricky to coordinate and I initially felt a bit like I do when I try to use chopsticks! Eventually I managed to get the hang of it and the Mahl stick became incredibly useful.
Next up was the planning of our first sign. We began by writing out an alphabet that we could use as a basis for our lettering. As somebody who’s always been fascinated by typography, I found this really interesting.
We created a standardized set of capitals then set about transferring our chosen letters onto baking paper.
We covered the back of the paper in chalk and traced the outline of the letters onto the boards (prepared for us by Steve), being careful to centre the words.
Once we had our outline it was time to paint in the letters – this was a bit scary at first and we were allowed to tape off some of the ends of our letters to help with our finishes but as the process continued I gained more confidence. This whole process took a surprising amount of time and before we knew it, the end of the first day was upon us!
Day 2 and we were excited to review our signs and get started on our new ones. First stop today was a demonstration of how to do freehand lettering. We had a chance to practice this on baking paper and then we got stuck in to drawing out our design on a new board using chalk pencils. This was much trickier, as we had to work out the centring as we went but after a couple of attempts we were ready to paint. I chose to use white on blue again and enjoyed the process, though the script I had developed wasn’t quite as loose as Steve’s beautiful demonstrations.
Partway through this sign, Steve got us set up with some gold leaf, stuck on with a gold size, we learnt about the optimum time to apply the leaf. I split my piece down in strips to apply them in a line under my word and was quite pleased with the effect (this photo is from before I cleaned off the excess with white spirit).
Our final task was to add in the shadows to our signs from the day before. After a tutorial from Steve we got stuck in and I actually started to feel much more confident with my use of the brush and Mahl stick at this point.
That was the end of a wonderful weekend and time for the return journey to Devon (I got a lift in a warm car this time!). This was a wonderful course and Steve a fantastic teacher, I’d totally recommend going on a course with him if you want to learn about signwriting!