calligraphy

A collection of 32 posts

calligraphy Featured

Callivember 2024

In November of last year, I participated in the Callivember challenge. In case you are not familiar with it, there is a set of 30 words, 1 for each day, to write during the month of November. Any style and technique is fair game. (Technically, the guy who runs the

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Quaker marriage certificate

A few months ago, I was invited to a friends' wedding, and they asked me if I could create a marriage certificate for them. I've never done this before, but I figured it would be a nice challenge, so I said yes. Of course it turned out

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It is real

This was in many ways an interesting project. I feel like I both made really good progress in terms of improving the quality of my letters (especially the O's), and that there are quite a few imperfections in the final version. I am choosing to let it be

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Callivember 2020

In November I participated in a calligraphy/lettering challenge. A list of 30 words was provided, one for each day. I did most of the prompts a day or two ahead of time, since there is not much daylight in November, and it is much harder to get a good

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First Ideal of the Knights Radiant

The piece in this post is a quote from the "Stormlight Archive" series by Brandon Sanderson, which I started reading recently. In the story, there is a group called the Knights Radiant, and this text is known as their First Ideal. If you are not familiar with the

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Built-up Capitals with Yves Leterme

In the spring and early summer, I had signed up for a Built-up Capitals class. Based on my previous experience with Yves' online classes, I figured I would not be able to learn all of the material presented, but at least I would learn something new, and improve my

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Poem in a shape

This post was originally written in December 2019. In May 2020, I added a new version of the piece, and a section describing it, at the bottom. I have long been fascinated by the “Butterfly, Marine Mollusk, and Pear” page, which was created by Joris Hoefnagel and Georg Bocskay in

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Card with raised design

The final assignment for my class was to make a custom card for another person in the group. Card recipients were assigned randomly, and we could ask them a few questions about their preferences. The person receiving my card said her favorite colors were burgundy and olive, and offered several

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Blackletter cities

This week, I was studying fraktur capitals, and my homework assignment was to write out a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I chose to write a list of US cities. There are many different styles of writing that can be classified as "blackletter". For this

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How to photograph calligraphy

When you create a beautiful piece, and want to share it with others, you need to take a good picture of it. While the photography part may sound daunting to some, there are actually just a few simple things to watch out for. I'm going to go over

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From paper to digital

I've been studying calligraphy for almost 10 years now, and I found that depending on where you are geographically, it can either look like calligraphy is just another art class anyone can take, or like it's some special club where a selected few get to study

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My heart is in the work

When I was at the Cheerio workshop, there was one exercise that I did not finish. I had started working on a quote done in a pointed brush, but I simply ran out of time. This is what it looked like as part of my final project: When I got

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Insular adventures

Inspired by my summer class on Uncials, I decided to apply the same approach of studying manuscripts carefully, and coming up with a hand that is grounded in history, and yet not archaic, to learning some insular majuscule. The Book of Kells is a magnificent manuscript to learn from. Not

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Roman capitals with John Stevens

In October, I went to Cheerio for the first time to take a workshop with John Stevens on Roman capitals. First of all, I would like to point out that Camp Cheerio is in a beautiful place, and the view took my breath away. It was such a joy to

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Uncials with Ewan Clayton

The biggest lesson I took away from this class is that there is no single Uncial alphabet, but instead there are different historic variations. We explored different manuscripts and came up with a self-consistent hand, where pen angle, stroke weight and letterform for each letter match the overall style. Of

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The price of anonymity

I had a very interesting and unintentional experience with trying to sell my work anonymously. It all started with the Rendez-vous Calligraphy Conference. I wanted to enter a piece in the participant exhibit, and the only requirement was to make it an 8x8 inch square. I didn’t expect to

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Flat file project

I needed a place to store my paper, so I found some used flat files online. They were operational, but a little beat-up on the outside. Given that they only cost 1/10 of what they would cost new, it was a pretty good deal. Still, looking at them made

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Brush class with Carl Rohrs

There is one tool that I have always found to be particularly challenging: the brush. I became especially aware of this after taking a sing-painting workshop, and seeing how all of my letters were complete garbage. When Seattletters conference came around, I decided to challenge myself, and finally learn some

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Trajans with Yves Leterme

I signed up for an online Trajans class with Yves, and it was great. I learned a lot, even though I did get to the most interesting (and most challenging) part of the class — brush letters. I would definitely take the class again if I had an opportunity, just so

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Creativity takes courage

I will freely admit to this one being one of my most "cheaty" projects. The task was to write out a quote: Creativity takes courage. — Henri Matisse I wanted to write huge pointed pen letters, but that was hard for 2 reasons: 1. I didn't have

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Fear mediocrity

I don't quite remember where I saw this person, but I saw someone wearing a T-shirt that said: Don't fear failure, fear mediocrity. I really liked this quote. Apparently, it's attributed to a bodybuilder, and I wasn't able to find any other

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Flattery and criticism

This quote is one of my favorites: I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free. — Georgia O'Keefe When I was working on the thumbnails, naturally, I had to explore the drain concept. Needless to say,

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Luck favors the alert mind

This was another fun quote assignment for my class with Carol. We started working on it during a class session, and by the end of it I had come up with an obligatory folded pen version: Even though it was generally liked by my classmates, it just didn't

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Smile, breathe, and go slowly

I was taking a year-long class with Carol DuBosch, and one of the assignments was to write out this quote: Smile, breathe, and go slowly. — Thich Nhat Hanh I started out with a few quick sketches. These are not exactly thumbnails, but I needed to present them in class, so

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Calligraphy Conference

This week I was at the International Calligraphy Conference in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is the first calligraphy conference that I've gone to, and it has definitely exceeded my expectations. It was held at the Warren Wilson College, and I got to (once again) sleep in a dorm.