For the past month or so, I’ve been sporadically playing around with pointed pen calligraphy. And I’ll tell you what, it’s fun and easy. I get in a meditative mode when engaged in anything creative or detail-oriented, but calligraphy really ups the ante — steady breath, steady hand, pausing every few strokes to dip the pen. It feels great.
Also, the soft scratch of nib on paper is one of the great sounds in life. Up there with the solid whack of tennis ball with racquet, or the metallic squeak when changing chords on a guitar.
I’m a novice, but…
One thing I’ve noticed is that I get so focused on the letter forms, that I lose all ability to spell.
Two “l”s in always? Cmon now. That simply doesn’t happen after third or fourth grade….unless you’re focusing too much on making it pretty!
Obbbbsessed with repeating letters where there are no repeating letters.
I took a couple Skillshare classes, like this one and this one, which helped me figure out what supplies to get, how to assemble them, and encouraged me to start putting pen to paper. My favorite class was this one by Molly Suber Thorpe. It focuses on digitizing calligraphy. I haven’t yet produced anything worthy of such treatment, but I really liked seeing Molly’s process and felt a kinship with her OCD-veering attention to detail.
If you’re not into subscribing to Skillshare, here’s a peak at some supplies that’ll get you off the ground and running. They’ve been great to me, though I admittedly have nothing to compare them to as they’re all I’ve used so far.
