I was visiting my friends Aaron and Anita’s house for the first time and decided to pick up some lovely Asian pears from the local farmer’s market. Refrigerated, it’s the perfect and refreshing fruit for a warm summer day.
Of course, I love adding a little calligraphy wherever I can, so I recycled an Amazon box with summery wrapping paper and made a little gift tag. There, much better!
Monoline with pencil
This was my first session’s homework from the Roman Capitals class. We started with monoline, using just pencil to get the basic shapes and structure of the capital letters, then moved to basic strokes with a chiseled/broad-edged nib. After the softness and wispiness of Copperplate, I found Roman Capitals quite challenging, especially when it required getting used to writing with a chiseled nib. The pen angle is also crucial to writing each letter, as the angle of the pen determines the thickness of the strokes and affect the look of the letters. It is quite different from the pointed pen because it has a reservoir that needs to be removed and cleaned to prolong the life of the nib.
Practicing the basic strokes
Roman Capitals A to Z
Writing A to Z in Roman Capitals. This was much harder than it looks! The rules of spacing was also tough to grasp. All the letter shapes affect each other as you write, especially in Roman Capitals.
For our final project, we were to choose a poem or a phrase we like, write it on nice paper, and put the finished piece in a frame. I chose a poem by Emily Dickinson:
At first I was going to write in a square format and use a square frame, but it just didn’t look right. I ended up getting a panorama photo-size frame from Aaron Brothers and it worked out nicely! My teacher gave us all great ideas, and I was able to use some lovely pressed flowers she had saved from her garden. The whole piece really came together when framed.
By Chivalries as tiny by Emily Dickinson, 1856. Written in Roman Capitals with gouache on Arches Hot Press paper.
The Roman Capitals class was really challenging, but it was tremendously helpful to study the form and structure of the letters. I think it has already helped my own handwriting and I’m sure it will help as I learn more calligraphy styles.
Ready for Spencerian!
The Spencerian Script is an American style of handwriting, developed by Platt Rogers Spencer in 1840. It was gradually replaced by the Palmer Method and almost lost in history until it was revived by Michael Sull. Its elegant form and sublime flourishes truly make it unique and beautiful.
Thanks to my teacher, we found out about a Spencerian Workshop being taught by Master Penman Michael Sull, coordinated by Greg Minuskin and Janet Takahashi. What a great opportunity to spend a whole day with other Spencerian enthusiasts and to learn from the master himself!
My final project for the Copperplate class is to make holiday cards. I usually send out 50+ cards every holiday season, so I decided to make it a big project and have them letterpressed!
I wanted to give my business to a local printer, but everyone I could find around Los Angeles quoted me way over my budget. I found Enframing Press on Etsy and they were so wonderful and accommodating. They are located in Santa Cruz, so it also felt great to give my business to a California printer.
Practice Practice Practice
It’s been a few weeks since I started my first real calligraphy class in mid-September, and I can’t get enough! Last year, after deciding to be more serious about calligraphy (and Copperplate in particular), I checked out a few books, went online for instructions, but just couldn’t really get my writing to look the way I wanted. I really wanted to learn it the “right way” with a professional.
After finding the Society for Calligraphy, I emailed a few local calligraphy teachers in February, and one teacher wrote me back. She told me she wasn’t teaching Copperplate at the time and suggested I email a few others (who never wrote me back for one reason or another). In August, she contacted me again about starting a Copperplate class, and so I began my Copperplate studies with Yukimi Annand. I was really glad my friend Winnie was interested in taking the class as well and decided to join me. It’s so much better to have a friend along on this great journey.
Writing in the Palmer Method
And so it begins!
One of my goals of the recent years has been to learn calligraphy, and maybe even become a professional calligrapher.
I used to love the act of writing and practicing my penmanship, but after typing on the keyboard for many years, my writing hand has become weak! This is the first step to become strong again, by practicing my ABCs like we all did when we were little. I took calligraphy classes back in junior high and high school and remember how fun it was. I took pride in my penmanship and would sit at my desk for hours just practicing my script and to sign my name, sometimes with little dotted hearts and flourishes. I’ve always been told that I have nice handwriting, in both script and print – at my first part-time job as a clerk/receptionist for a CPA, my boss would always ask me to fill out all of the clients’ 1040 and 1040EZ. He said “you should become a CPA just for your handwriting alone!!!” Haha.
Of course, when computers came into my life, I happily abandoned my pen & paper over the smooth, shiny surface of my keyboard and the warm, pleasant sound of *tap tap tap* only an Apple keyboard could make. ;) Over the years, I still held the art of writing very closely to my heart. I still have all sorts of pens, ink, gel, and whatnot, in many different colors and weights; a small collection of lovely writing paper (my favorite brand is Crane); I even bought myself a Calligraphy Kit a few years back which has been sadly sitting in my desk drawer.
But this year, I decided that it was time to dust off my quills and re-learn how to write again! The art of calligraphy is an age-old tradition that requires much discipline and patience, something I could really use. It’s almost the same type of “zen” I feel when I’m knitting. It’s almost like a meditation where my mind and my hands are working together to create something, and all the external thoughts and distractions are temporarily banished from the whirlwind in my brain. And wouldn’t it be nice to make something beautiful and get a little extra income on the side?
So there you have it, my little declaration to start doing calligraphy again. I’m going to try to blog my progress here when I can. Hopefully few years from now, I will look back at this and see how much I have improved.