caligráfica

Final Project: Winding Things Up

(Found in my Drafts folder -- this was written in 2009 -- it's about my final project for DeAnn's gothic textura class. The project remains unfinished. O the shame.)

My last gothic class was a while ago.  It ended wonderfully.  I'm still amazed at what a great time I had learning and doing it.  We had a two week break, but tomorrow is my first copperplate class

 I spent Friday afternoon  with DeAnn Singh, my teacher, talking about finishing.  What I've done is a layer of gilding on the initial capital (a T) and have started painting the decorative illumination. 

 

Calligraphy Jag

I've been on something of a calligraphy jag lately -- finding a great deal of pleasure in lettering. The italic letter forms are coming easier -- I think I'm more suited to the smaller Brause 1.5 nib than the Speedball C-2. There's still a lot that needs improving but the flow is starting to feel natural. 

 The quotations I'm practicing have a Christmas theme.  I'd like to make something for the holidays but have no idea what. Maybe I'll just trying doing some lettering on envelopes. 

I'm trying not to press so hard, but it's difficult. I'm also still struggling a bit with ink flow (the two are likely related).  Still the letters are looking less heavy. 

I can't tell you how much pleasure doing this writing gives me. It's intensely relaxing and absorbing.

The above writing has been done on gridded practice paper, which as you can see has not just the base and ascender lines but also has slant lines as well. This makes it much easier to judge letter size and, of course, to keep a consistent slant.

Below are my first two attempts to work without slant lines on paper printed with lines from the Scribbler's generator.   

As you can see, the letters get fat / heavy again with fewer of the nice thicks and thins. There's lots to still practice, especially since I have to make my example book pages by our class next Wednesday. 

Good thing the practice is the best part for me. I enjoy the process a lot more than the outcome.  

 

Still More Italic Practice

I did more calligraphy practice tonight. I'm trying to move from the Speedball C-2 -- which I used for yesterday's work and for this first page today. 

As you can see, I'm having a little problem with ink flow.  I'm not sure what's up -- it's probably still to do with the pressure I'm putting on the nib. 

This second page was written with a Brause .2 nib. Again there's the problem of ink flow -- something which bothers me because I haven't had any problem using Brause nibs in the past. They're my favorite brand of nib because they're generally they're more forgiving of my tendency to press too hard. 

I like the Brause 2 nib. Going smaller is nice because the pen doesn't need to be dipped as often. Carrie gave us practice sheets from Scribbler's so we can try to go down as small as 3/4. The lines on those sheets are so close together I can't quite imagine it.  We'll see how it goes. 

Italic Calligraphy Practice

The calligraphy class at RAND is focused on the italic hand right now. I've been struggling with it more than I would have expected.  It's not the letter forms that have been a challenge (though I'm definitely struggling with the letter "s") but the problem of pen angle and pressure. 

Carrie has been helping me, both of us thinking that I had so internalized the 30 degree pen angle of the foundational hand that I was unable to switch to the 45 degree angle that's needed for italic lettering. However, when she was going over my homework she saw another issue -- I press too hard on the pen nib which makes it go wider and makes my strokes too full.  It's true, I write with something like an death grip, holding the pen too tightly and pushing on the nib too hard. 

We're not meeting next week (though there's a playdate the Saturday after Thanksgiving) so my goal is to break myself of the pressure habit between now and then.  I'm definitely feeling into calligraphy right now -- I came home from class and then practiced for another two hours. Italic is a beautiful hand and one I at which I would really like to have some level of mastery.

Jittery Hands

I did practice calligraphy yesterday -- something I'd planned to do all weekend -- but discovered that when I'm emotional my hands shake. Try as I might, I couldn't clear my mind and relax into lettering. I quit after an hour.  I'm going to try and get back to it today with a clearer, happier head.

Guess this counts as an excuse. 

Foundational Book Project

I've spent the last few weeks learning and practicing the foundational hand. It's deceptively simple looking and definitely difficult in practice. Last week we learned the capitals (or majuscule) -- which are even harder than the miniscules (or lower case).  I spent last Saturday at a calligraphy play date at RAND trying to improve and mostly ended up feeling inadequate.

Here's what a day of practice got me:

I'm still struggling but belive me, these majuscules are a struggle. This practice sheet was done on graph paper which accounts for the somewhat decent spacing.

Carrie is having us work on a project for the class, a personal book of the foundational hand.  She's given us rather beautiful paper covers to use.

Inside the cover, we're supposed to have a title page.  Here's mine, at least the first draft.  I'm not happy with the spacing. I'm still living in my gothic past, but the foundational hand isn't supposed to be quite so tight.

 
The next page is the foundational  hand alphabet in miniscule (lower case). This is a pretty good reflection of my skill level right now. I see quite a bit of wobble in my letters and know there's a lot of room for improvement, but I'm trying to see this as a snapshot of my skills at this point. Hopefully someday I'll be able to look back and see quite a bit of improvement. 

The third, and as of now the last, page is supposed to be a brief quotation. I chose one from Chaucer that feels appropriate to my calligraphy study.

Foundational Hand 9/14 Class

Buses! I was late for class because of the buses and the elaborate check-in procedure at RAND. Will have to leave earlier next week. :(

Class was interesting tonight. We put our homework on the board and Carrie pointed out areas we needed work. My lower case c, e, z and a came in for criticism, but my n and m were deemed nicely rounded. We then worked through the lower case alphabet again, focusing on the circular forms and learning some nice variations on the w. Whereas the gothic style was all about keeping a consistant 45 degree pen angle, the curves of the foundation hand mean that the pen angle has to be varied by the direction of the stroke.  This was not easy

One interesting thing I noticed about the group at RAND, they like to talk calligraphy via numbers and angles. I'm not very mathmatically inclined and found myself tuning out in ways that weren't helpful because what we were studying was important.  Further, I'm going to need to be better about packing my supplies. Carrie pointed out the class supply list to me and I was abashed to discover I didn't have the right tools for the lesson. I was like that kid at school that never has his kit and has to borrow from other people or the teacher. Since it was my first lesson, I think I was forgiven, but it's not a reputation I want. 

So tomorrow I get to go to Graphaids for some paper and a few other things and then can start working on my practice book project. Can hardly wait. 

 

New Class: Foundational Hand

After finishing my dissertation (finally) and taking a break of over a year, I've started taking calligraphy classes again. Unfortunately I can't take DeAnn Singh's classes, despite her now being famous because of a wonderful and much deserved article in the LA Times, but am taking a course on Fine Tuning the Fundamentals from Carrie Imai Wednesday nights at RAND.  

My first lesson is tomorrow (I missed the first two classes but have been given catch up homework to work on this week.  I've cleaned and dusted off my calligraphy space, pulled out my pens and inks and am ready to get back to it. So far, if practice is any guide, I'm not very good at this hand (we're starting with foundational).  But I find the practice soothing and it's great to be putting ink to paper again.  

More soon. 

Hiatus

I can't promise when this blog will come back.  I'm leaving it up for the same reason I'm not boxing up my calligraphy supplies.  However, my life as a graduate student combined with my dad living with us means I no longer have time to take calligraphy classes or (for now) even to practice my lettering.  

Meanwhile it's a pleasant archive of something I love.  

I can promise that someday I'll be back.  Meanwhile, visit DeAnn's site.  Her classes are always amazing. 

New Classes

An update you on how the gothic project turned out to be posted later.  Meanwhile...

...yes, I'm back.  But this time I have some good reasons for being away.

 Yesterday  I practiced (copperplate) calligraphy for the first time in over a month -- Thursday was my first class (uncial) in almost as long.  What happened you ask?

For reasons too complex and boring to go into here, I had to defend my dissertation months ahead of schedule (have I mentioned I'm a PhD student in English?  Anyway, that too.). To be able to do this, I had to spend 3.5 weeks writing.  Write I did too, more than 100 pages, right up to the very last moment.  As Flanders and Swann said, it was all right for quantity, but there wasn't much I could do about the quality by that point.

The shocking news was that it was approved by my committee.  Barring some revisions which I'm excited about having the chance to make, my PhD is finally done.  I'm still recovering from the combined shock and exhaustion.  This past weekend, spent in Santa Barbara with Paul, went a long way toward bringing me back to earth 

Now, update is over, back to calligraphy...

I'm starting back to my copperplate class tomorrow.  Here's a sample sheet by DeAnn:

She's recommended a orange red ink which is a lovely bright color and works especially well with the pointed pen.  I'm surprisingly nervous at returning and being behind, especially after seeing what everyone else is doing and knowing I haven't been practicing at all.  However, last week when I attended her uncial class (more later) DeAnn promised to give me extra tutoring so I can catch up.  We've got a bit of a trade going on as I worked on her blog to give it a more unified look with her website. 

On Thursday I attended my first uncial class at RAND, also with DeAnn.  It's a totally different sort of hand.  Eventually we'll switch to the broad chiseled nib, like we used for gothic, but for now we're using speedball nibs.  I've never used them before -- it's quite a change.  It gives the hand an art deco look that's interesting.  

 

I'm still struggling a bit with the proporitions of the letters, something you'll see when I start posting pictures of my own stuff.  

How will it work having two lettering clases going at once, one pointed pen, one not?  Who knows.  What I do know is I've missed lettering a lot and am thrilled to be back at it.