I just came back from an excellent Lettering Workshop with Laura Di Piazza at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

The best part was learning to use a COLA PEN (often made by folding a piece of a Coke can!) I loved the loose, scratchy, messy freedom.

The faster and harder you press, the more splatters you get. All these alphabets were done with this same pen. Very fine lines and really fat ones too...

It's the PERFECT tool for creating insane laughter. and screams!!

And I think it might work well for the Masthead of my third thesis volume (just a little insane...)

We also got to try a bunch of other pens - pointed nib (which we have used in cartooning studio), a ruling pen, parallel pen, and we used watercolor in the pointed nib pens too.

It was great to take a break from Thesis work, but also get some lettering ideas - so it was like I was still actually "working". And then I came back to my apartment and waded through the three issues worth of comics on the floor...