FrakOne feat. Corecodile ? #speakforyourself “kind of interview”

This is the first piece of the #speakforyourself “kind of interview” series. We will be trying to get you guys talk about your passion, and how you made it and more. Keep in touch, you might be the next in line!

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Welcome FrakOne! Big Up and a massive thank you.
RESPECT!

“My name is Guillaume Schaffhauser aka FrakOne, i’m 37 years old and i live in a very small town in the east of France. My “regular” job is school teacher.”

?:Calligraphy How many years Years? 6

I started doing calligraphy nearly six years ago in 2012, at this time i was 32 years old (what is quite late !). Since my childhood I was always fascinated by calligraphy, my parents have a friend who is a professional artist and calligrapher, she’s called Denise Lach and she was a teacher in an art school in Basel Switzerland; they regularly had mail coming from her in beautiful envelopes with big stamps and of course amazing calligraphy and letterings, I loved it.

When I was a teenager I got interested in graffiti and tagging, I did a few sketches, went out at night a few times but I wasn’t very good at it and not brave enough I think; anyway I’m a fan of graffiti, tags and everything about letters. I studied ethnology at universty, my work was about graffiti artists, I wanted to know their rules, codes etc. I have a big respect for all street artists and particulary those who write!

I listen to a lot of underground hip hop, and Metal/Hardcore/punk music and in both culture, lettering and calligraphy are very important. Actually i was the singer of a Hardcore band called “aim for da head”, when we stopped playing music i felt like something was missing in my life, i had to “create” again…

When I discovered the work of SHOE (Niels Meulman) and his “Calligraffiti”, I was very impressed, the perfect mix of graffiti and calligraphy, it was fresh and original. I started to look for similar artists on internet and then I saw the work of Luca Barcelona who is for me one of the best calligrapher of his generation. A short time later another great artist impressed me, his name: THEOSONE!!!! I said to myself “You have to do that!”, so I bought some calligraphy pens and started to practice, after a few days I though I was able to progress so I searched on internet everything I could find from the artists above to inspire me and I began to practice like crazy, until now I’m self-taught.

?:FrakOne Calligraphy Slide show:

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?:Favourite Styles and influences?

Like I said, I’m a huge fan of graffiti writing and especially handstyles (Kanser, Badypnose, Dixit just to name the french ones) and i think there’s a touch of this in my work, i love to add drips and stuff to my pieces ! But in general i think i’m influenced by all the calligraphers around, from the masters like Hermann Zapf to modern calligraphy, lettering and typography artists. Inspiration is everywhere.

Without doubt, blackletters are my favorite scripts, I began my calligraphy journey with gothics and now i think i am able to write quite good Fraktur, Textura or Batarde (even if I’m far from the real masters like Rudolf Koch or Hermann Zapf !!).

I also love brush script and do a lot of it (with brushpens, crayola markers or any kind of broad edge markers), i work a lot on italics too (or cancellaresca) even if i’m not happy yet with my letters ! Roman capitals, copperplate, spencerian, are also styles i want to dig…

?:Future projects?

I’m a member of Calligraphy Masters team since 2015 and I really want to thank Milen Balbuzanov (founder of CM) and all the people in the team for all the good things that happened to me since i know all these fantastic people !

I will also be teaching in Poland this summer, 8-14 of july in the amazing monastery of Hebdow (near Krakow), all infos @kaligraf.eu on facebook or Instagram.

Finally i want to thank all the people on social media who follow and support my work, love calligraphy and #keepwriting !!!