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I asked for some calligraphy stuff for the holidays from my mom, because as an art teacher, she has unparalleled access to and knowledge of art supplies and she also frequently gets them for free (and she's lost more of them in her house than exist in our entire flat).
Although drawing letters is okay and I have an enormous collection of free fonts that I don't do anything with (now that I no longer make icons or a layout for my website), I haven't ever had a particular interest in calligraphy until a few years ago when I bought a metallic gold pen with a flat calligraphy tip for the purpose of addressing Christmas gifts directly on the paper, thus eliminating bows, ribbons, and To/From stickers, all of which have irritated me for a long time in my role of present-wrapper. The necessary angled stance, though, as I was testing it out, made me think it would be a waste not to look at a visual reference, so I found a Chancery cursive font or something like that to copy. But of course, once starting a skill like that, you can't just stop right away. A small amount of practice made it clear how much more practice would be necessary to be deft at handling the flat tip. Then some googling turned up lots of lovely-looking letters that I wanted to try.
So now I'm the proud owner of two fountain pens, and the book on medieval quill lettering I picked up at the giftshop of the Medieval Museum in Stockholm has seen a lot of work. I still like Uncial lettering the best, so it's nice that it's the easiest for a beginner. I mean, I thought it was challenging, until I moved on to the Gothic page. A paragraph of lowercase blackletter "a" last night was so irritating to my mind and wrist that I had to put the paper away and take 400 mg of ibuprofen.
So far I'm just using an efficient, light German fountain pen with interior ink reservoirs, but I also got a dip pen with interchangeable brass tips, so I look forward to buying Chinese and Japanese ink sticks and making my own in the near future.
Also, I'm thinking about what to use for practice lettering, aside from the alphabet of course. Fanfiction, maybe. Or memes.
Although drawing letters is okay and I have an enormous collection of free fonts that I don't do anything with (now that I no longer make icons or a layout for my website), I haven't ever had a particular interest in calligraphy until a few years ago when I bought a metallic gold pen with a flat calligraphy tip for the purpose of addressing Christmas gifts directly on the paper, thus eliminating bows, ribbons, and To/From stickers, all of which have irritated me for a long time in my role of present-wrapper. The necessary angled stance, though, as I was testing it out, made me think it would be a waste not to look at a visual reference, so I found a Chancery cursive font or something like that to copy. But of course, once starting a skill like that, you can't just stop right away. A small amount of practice made it clear how much more practice would be necessary to be deft at handling the flat tip. Then some googling turned up lots of lovely-looking letters that I wanted to try.
So now I'm the proud owner of two fountain pens, and the book on medieval quill lettering I picked up at the giftshop of the Medieval Museum in Stockholm has seen a lot of work. I still like Uncial lettering the best, so it's nice that it's the easiest for a beginner. I mean, I thought it was challenging, until I moved on to the Gothic page. A paragraph of lowercase blackletter "a" last night was so irritating to my mind and wrist that I had to put the paper away and take 400 mg of ibuprofen.
So far I'm just using an efficient, light German fountain pen with interior ink reservoirs, but I also got a dip pen with interchangeable brass tips, so I look forward to buying Chinese and Japanese ink sticks and making my own in the near future.
Also, I'm thinking about what to use for practice lettering, aside from the alphabet of course. Fanfiction, maybe. Or memes.
