A couple of weeks ago, I posted a story premise challenge and offered one of a variety of prizes to the winners. Two of them chose for me to take a picture of a word, spelled out creatively. So here are the pictures of the two words: Swoosh and Phewf!
Swoosh: This was requested by Michelle Proulx. Actually, she asked for Shwoop! which is the sound of a spaceship bending the space/time continuum. But I got mixed up and did Swoosh, which is a more mundane type of speed word. I think I will have to do Shwoop! at some point. My apologies, Michelle.
It was pretty fun drawing this, although I got some strange looks. Luckily our street is so quiet that no cars passed while I was drawing it. The downside of that, of course, is that I had to wait a long time for something to drive by. It’s even more fun, since it’s not a word that people could find in a dictionary if they looked it up.
Phewf!: This was requested by Jilanne Hoffmann. It’s an expression of relief, such as Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes might use.
I made this by wrapping thread around pins in a very specific pattern. Here is what it looks like uncropped:
There were three third winners, but the third one, nightlake, opted for a story, so I’ll post that when it’s ready.
The Green-Walled Tower 
May 14th, 2013 at 6:37 pm
very creative. like the thread pattern specifically
May 14th, 2013 at 8:57 pm
Thanks. 🙂 It’s a technique I’ve developed in the last few months.
May 14th, 2013 at 8:54 pm
Cool work and very creative. I bet you got some very strange looks. Good thing no cars came by.
May 14th, 2013 at 8:57 pm
Well, I live in Korea and as a foreigner here, everything we do and are is a bit strange, so they probably thought it was just something foreigners do. 🙂
May 14th, 2013 at 9:10 pm
That is really creative! It must have taken you ages to do phewf! I’m just glad that when you were doing swoosh that no cars came by.
May 14th, 2013 at 9:45 pm
It took me maybe 2 hours to do phewf! I have a system worked out so I had already done all the trial and error. As for the other one, our road is very quiet, so no cars go fast even if they do go down it.
May 14th, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Very cool! And no worries on the typo 🙂 Swoosh is more appropriate for cars anyway. A+ 🙂
May 15th, 2013 at 2:21 am
Thank you, David! This is awesome! You have inspired me to write a post about “word art” for my blog. Stay tuned…
May 15th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Cool. I’d love to read it. 🙂
May 16th, 2013 at 1:05 pm
What an interesting idea! Liked it a lot. Great capturing of the feel of the words. I agree Phewf is befitting for Calvin and Hobbes.
May 16th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
sounds like a very tough story!
May 22nd, 2013 at 12:47 am
The uncropped “Phewf” is also a very cool piece in itself.
May 22nd, 2013 at 4:08 pm
I think so too, which is why I included it. The way I make it is to write the word on the computer, then construct the letters with lines on MS Paint. I print it out and assign every line ending a number and work out the sequences of number to form each line. Then I put pins around, one for each number and follow the sequence I wrote down to reconstruct the word. Hmm, not sure if that makes any sense. 🙂 Anyway, it was lots of fun.