Notes for the Beginning Calligrapher

I can't do calligraphy because: “My handwriting stinks.”

So does mine!

To a large extent Calligraphy is a separate skill from writing. I have a lot to overcome every time I pick up a pen: my eyesight is not as good as it was in my 20s and my hands aren’t as sure. However, I can still do calligraphy, just not as fast as I used to. Unless you are physically incapable of writing, you can do calligraphy. One of the best calligraphers of all time [Durer considered him a master] was born without arms. He held the pen between his toes.

Fight only one battle at a time:

Many people try to learn how to use the pen, draw guidelines, layout a page and write perfect, finished pieces, all at the same time. Very few of them survive.

What I recommend for a beginner:

Get a felt pen with a broad nib, the broader the better.
[Note: Small nibs hide your mistakes better than big nibs.]
Get a pad of lined or graph paper. I used a left over institutional green Record book. They can be expensive if you try to get one new, but there is some really good paper in those things. Any good pad will do. See the lesson: "Pens and Paper 101" for more information before getting a work pad.

Drag the pen and pad around with you and use them for doodles. Doodle alphabets and poems, drawings and squiggles, circles, dots and lines. This will help you learn about how to move the pen and control it while not taking up large blocks of your day. There's time enough after you've developed some skill to study different tools and methods. As a matter of fact, you'll drive yourself to do it as you learn enough to feel the limitations of the tools you’re using.

Felt Tip Pen?!!

By the time the felt tip pen wears out, you will probably want the cleaner lines provided by a better pen. Replace the felt tip with a fountain pen. A fountain pen is portable! You are still learning. The ability to pick up the pen and just start writing is more important than learning how to struggle with ink wells and dip pens.

The Vocabulary of Calligraphy:

There are many terms and phrases that belong to the calligraphic community. I've been doing Calligraphy for 40 years and I still don't know half of what is going on and don't know the proper names for most of what I do know. Don't let it bother you. You’ll learn as you go.

Dealing with Frustration:

The biggest problem I encountered when teaching novices is the problem of frustration. There is the frustration of not understanding the vocabulary, of handling the pen, of selecting paper, and of “doing it the right way".

It is a simple fact that you hand can only do what your eye can see, so, you will always see shortcomings in your work. This is an important point: You cannot draw what you cannot see! Your skill of your eye will always be ahead of the skill of your hand.

To counter this problem, once a week, write a simple phrase on a piece of paper, date it and put it away. After a time, when you feel you haven't made any progress, pull them all out and look at them in chronological order.

You will be surprised at what you've learned.

Learning curve:

In my experience the learning curve is a series of steps and not a continuous improvement. One starts, after reaching a new proficiency, with a stable and reproducible set of skills. As time moves and one attempts to learn a new skill, one becomes more erratic and becomes worse before the next quantum jump of improvement occurs.

THIS IS NORMAL!

I observed this teaching archery. An archer, whose average score was a stable 10 (range of 9-11) would start getting scores that went from 4 to 16 with their average dropping to a little bit than 10. Then, one day--poof--an average score of 13 with almost no variation, i.e. a range of 12-14 with mostly 13s.

I've watched my students and myself learning calligraphy and found the same pattern. It can be very frustrating to learn a skill and watch it deteriorate while one is working so hard to improve it. I now warn my students that this will happen and that it is very normal. The deterioration is part of the learning curve.

The caveat to this is sometimes the steps occur so fast you don't notice the pattern.

Keep the Practice Pad!

I still have the book I started with years ago, and I still enjoy going back and looking at it and learning from it. I did some really bad stuff, but I also did some ignorant driven creative stuff there, too.

"The One True Way"

Calligraphy means beautiful writing. Keep that in mind. Everything else is secondary. You will hear and read many places, from many sources, about the "proper" way to do things. The only proper thing I've found in Calligraphy is to enjoy your work; when you lose the joy, stop doing the Calligraphy. As far as styles, tools, and procedures: experiment with them all and find the ones you enjoy. Don't let anyone sell you on the "One-True-Way"!
...including me,
...including now.

No one will ever see how you made your finished work. They will only see the results.

PLEASE

Enlightened Ones: those who share one's calligraphic traditions and styles.
Heretics: those whose calligraphic traditions differ.
Cursed Ones: who live in the outer darkness, calling blackletter "Ye Olde English" and who think felt tips and ballpoints are the epitome of writing implements.

BTW: I'm a Heretic and proud of it!

Within the calligraphic community, I've seen "discussions" about dip pens vs. fountain pens, metal nibs vs. natural nibs, authenticity vs. modernization and the validity of pen manipulation carried on with a fervor that would put a fundamentalist preacher to shame. Hallelujah! Holy Johnson be blessed! Amen.

Note: In the late 1800s, Edward Johnson rescued the art of calligraphy from obscurity and in 1906 published “Writing & Illuminating & Lettering”; a book that for a long time was the definitive book on calligraphy.

Questions:

As we said in the Army, "The only dumb question is the one you don't ask." An idea attributed to General Patton: "Ignorance is never having had a chance to learn while stupidity is having had the opportunity but failing to take advantage of it. It is OK to arrive ignorant as long as you don't leave stupid.

By now you have figured out that this is a web page and that raising your hand is probably not going to get a response. That's why there is email!

If you have questions, you can ask me by email to .

Do not be afraid of asking a question. Like most calligraphers, I'm just looking for a chance to ~~show off~~ share knowledge.

Concerning Exercises:

Calligraphy is voluntary—Unless you're a professional calligrapher, in which case you're all ready addicted and stuck with it—the world will not end nor your family starve if you never pick up a pen again. Keep that in mind while learning. Practice is important, but doing repetitive exercises is more likely to bore you to death than teach you anything. There will be times you will do repetitive exercises, but it should be your choice after you've discovered a pen stroke or pattern that you've just got to know, so you'll practice it over and over again, just for the love of the form.