Gold lettering on black and white grounds may be effectively shaded with almost any color but that of the yellow order. A well-known authority advises the use of the richest and most permanent tones of red, green, blue, and umber shades in shading gold letters placed on colored grounds. Reds, especially the intense and most brilliant reds, are warm, advancing colors for shading gold letters. Imagine, if you please, a more strikingly handsome combination than a gold letter shaded with red cast against a ground of some one of the fashionable greens. Or reverse the style, and put the gold letter upon a ground of carmine glazed over flamingo red, shading with green. Blue, as a shade, produces a cool, distant effect.
Black letters may be usually shaded with any of the primary or secondary colors. In shading it should be borne in mind that complementary colors cannot always be tastefully combined. As, for instance, yellow and orange would not look fetching to any extent when shaded with blue, although regarded as complementary. The learner should apply himself studiously to the study of happy and harmonious color effects in the matter of shading.
PUNCTUATION.
A staid old axiom has it that "art and education are twin sisters," but the examples of punctuation as seen in wagon lettering often met with suggest the inference that the vehicle letterer is not slow, at times, to offer a startling contradiction to the axiom. The sense of construction and meaning can be quickly and effectually destroyed in a piece of lettering by a bit of bad punctuation. The simple misplacing of a comma, period, or apostrophe,—about the only punctuation marks deemed necessary at present to bring out the full meaning and make symmetrical a job of vehicle lettering—often results in disfiguring an otherwise really meritorious piece of work. The late Mr. Geo. W. W. Houghton has defined the object of punctuation, "to so divide written or printed sentences that the meaning may be made more visibly clear."
In vehicle lettering as now practiced the more striking and illuminative words and phrases are set forth in separate lines, each line, as a rule, carrying a different size and a different style of letter. This system of vividly illuminating and emphasizing vehicle lettering has reduced the need of punctuation to the minimum; but it renders the necessity of a wise and judicious use of punctuation marks none the less imperative. In no way that we are aware of can the information which a line of lettering is intended to convey be so clearly perverted as through the medium of a flagrant error in punctuation. A sweep of lettering done according to the most approved standard of letter form and construction, but improperly punctuated, is at best only a distorted and deformed example of workmanship. The advertising pages of the big magazines offer fine advantages for the accumulation of reliable "pointers" upon the accepted practice of modern newspaper and magazine punctuation. To such sources the reader is invited to go if he would profit by the examples set forth by acknowledged masters of the art of punctuation.
ALPHABETS.
The Roman alphabet is easily the most beautiful and engaging of all the alphabets used by the wagon letterer. It is an alphabet of impressively graceful lines, curves flowing easy rather than exact, with nothing about it to suggest a lack of freedom or easy repose. The Roman letter, as conceived by the modern school of American sign writers and letterers, is at once the most picturesque and the most difficult to execute of any style known. It is a letter of severe requirements, enforcing in its proper execution a very facile and skilled manipulation of all the aids at the command of the workman. Inferior quality of work cannot be concealed in the Roman letter. Every curve of its noble form must be brought out and fully rounded if the letter is to be what its name implies. Accompanying this chapter is a Roman alphabet, and while there are a number of styles dignified under the title of Roman they are all formed on the same general principle. The Roman alphabet is deservedly held in high esteem by vehicle letterers and sign writers the country over. It is most commonly adapted to the needs of wagon lettering, especially. It is easily read and can be greatly extended, if necessary, without injury to its bold and legible characteristics. The distinctive features of the individual letters contained in the Roman alphabet are briefly summarized as follows:
