Jan Pickett - Featured Artist

Jan writes with both gouache and watercolour for all her calligraphic work, allowing a wonderful array of colours to be used with the confidence that the finely ground pigments will run smoothly through the nib.

It is important that any finished work will be lightfast, particularly if it is to be displayed other than within the confines of a book. As she writes, she loads her nib using a brush, allowing her to gradually feed different colours of either gouache or watercolour, which then mix within the pen, resulting in exciting, interesting effects. Applying the pigment dryly using sponge can produce a totally different background as seen in the ‘Y & Z’ image below.

She often works on detailed illustrations and line drawings, again using gouache, this time applied with her faithful workhorses, the Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes – her two favourite sizes being 0 and 1 as used for the Nursery Rhyme illustration.

Line drawings using brush and gouache seem to have a quality often not achieved with a pen. She believes that pens are for writing and brushes for drawing.

Her typical week is a delightful mix of teaching calligraphy, in order to further interest and keep the artform alive and also working to deadlines within the commercial world, be it lettering or illustrating.

Black & White Gouache & Coloured Pencil

Gouache

Design in permanent white designers' gouache 

Water colour NOEL with coloured pencil surround		Bleedproof White Designers' Gouache

Regular commissions vary from preparing and updating Memorial books, lettering for a variety of formal certificates to commercial work for the UK greetings card industry. With private commissions for all manner of special occasions – weddings, dedications, poetry interpretations – her work is always unexpected and there is never a dull moment.

Salisbury Memorial Book, written in Gouache 

Calligraphy in water colour 

Jan says, "I feel very lucky to be working with colour, letters and illustration, the fields I have loved since I was a child and that I still find so creative and wide ranging."

For more information about Jan Pickett's work visit www.janpickett.com

Water colour design with colour changing in the pen

Water colour design with gold leaf