Calligraphy practice part two
Tag Archives: letters
Is it easy to do calligraphy? Can you just write and let the pen flow to make a masterpiece or does it take skill/practice? What tools do you use? Love your work. c:
Hermann Zapf, one of the best calligraphers of all time, believes anyone can be a good calligrapher. The key to producing beautiful calligraphy is perseverance. You will only persevere if you enjoy what you’re doing. For this reason I’d personally suggest starting with a calligraphy style you particularly like the look of. When you have a reasonable grasp of that style you will notice the skills are transferable to other styles.
Most people could be producing what I’d consider to be a fairly good standard of calligraphy in a year or so. Virtuoso calligraphy on the other hand comes from decades of study and masterpieces don’t come about anytime soon either.
In terms of tools every calligrapher will have different tools they recommend. I’d personally recommend beginners start with Pilot Parallel Pens. This is mainly because you don’t have to think about refilling the nibs so you can focus on getting the forms right. ‘Manuscript’ produce a wide range of inexpensive calligraphy supplies which I find useful. Try out a variety of pens and nibs though. Specialist calligraphy suppliers are unlikely to sell bad equipment and many of their websites explain the relative merits of specific nibs and inks. Mitchell Copperplate pens are a great starting point for pointed pen calligraphy. In terms of paper any smooth cartridge paper should produce crisp results. Daler Rowney Smooth Cartridge Paper is a good choice. If you’re on a budget layout paper and marker pad paper are good for getting started.
Three books I’d recommend. ‘Foundations of Calligraphy’ by Sheila Waters, a modern master. ‘Calligraphy’ by Gaye Godfrey-Nicholls was published this year, a very good book for beginners. Finally ‘The Speedball Textbook’ is an inexpensive source of inspiration and instruction for people starting out.
Don’t get disheartened by early failures. There will be many of those, but failure is the key to success.
Saving for future reference
Started learning calligraphy!
Midterms are over!
So today I decided to give the typography tracing project in Karen Kavett’s Graphic Design Without a Computer: Part 1 video!
Since I don’t currently have tracing paper I just traced the letters as accurately as I could using paper and pen.
Since I love color I pained in some of the negative space after 🙂
I love both sending and receiving letters. Mailing these off today!
The last little while I’ve been about as antisocial as I get. I mean, I still spent a lot of time around people, and was happy to do so, but I didn’t seek out connections as often or as with as many people as I’m in the habit of doing. I guess I was just feeling a little bit exhausted. There is so much going on, not only in my life, but in everyone around me’s lives too, so its hard to make time for each other. Social interactions beyond some of my closest friends felt like a lot of effort, even with people I’m close with and admire and respect a lot. I guess I was just thinking about that today, and how its okay to have times like that, and that it’s important to me to form friendships that can last through time a part. Actually, in the friend making department, that is sort of my specialty, keeping in touch with people. So sometimes I get hurt feelings when the favour isn’t returned, even though I understand how much time long distance correspondence can take. I mean, I have a couple letters I need to mail right now that have been sitting on my shelf since before valentines day. I would like everyone in my life, from the past and present, that the time we spent together meant something to me, and that I still care about them even as we move on to new cities and new circles of friends. I have met too many fantastic people to be able to nurture relationships with nearly all of them, but that doesn’t change the way I feel about them or about people in general. Anyways, I’m looking forward to Coffee Pub tonight, and spending some time with the people I, uh, actually live with, as well as watching the show (and participating in it!)