I occasionally moan about taking multiple attempts to lock in a piece. Since I’m only doing this for fun without professional obligations, I quit when I run out of steam in a session. Otherwise I’d be taking exponentially more shots to get something right.
After testing Scorpio a few times on pre-used sheets, I had a decent run of attempts on blank sheets. I took them all downstairs for final selection, but my deciding brain wasn’t working that morning.
So I scanned them all for this blow by blow commentary.
I’ve need to practice the foundational hand again. But a rounded script wasn’t right for this prickly creature.
Still, you gotta try an idea a few times, to make sure it’s a dead end.
I next tried a sign script. It was a fun challenge to morph the blocky S into a swoopy tail. I was hoping the contrast might look cool, but it felt chunky.
I love the transition on this S to the swoop, but you can see where I lost concentration on the last O.
On the top piece, I tested compressing the script, but it felt even more chunkier. I went spiky with gothicized italics, but with a twist by going wide. I’ve been trying to figure out wide pointy O’s, but that wasn’t getting solved that morning.
I like how the glitch at the stinger makes sense for a scorpion but left too much space between the R and the P.
I dipped a bit too much water for the O, otherwise I might have picked this one even though I don’t love the joint at the S.
I preferred the stingers from the previous two examples, but the letters and spacing came together nicely, which is are the most important aspects in this digital age. Once scanned, I pushed the color towards a punchy rust orange instead of the faded brown from the children’s watercolor set.
So there’s 10 attempts at a word. I suspect more folks should share their process and their failures. So here is my contribution to rectify this absence. Maybe I’ll get really good one day and won’t have to take so many attempts for each prompt, but that’s a problem for next year.