"Love" with L cadel.
Calligraphy - the art of "beautiful (Greek -
kallos) writing ( Greek -
graphein - 'write')
I'm decidedly an amateur calligrapher, but what I lack in skill, I make up for in enthusiasm. I'm almost entirely self-taught, so anything I say should be viewed with that in mind.
Calligraphy is actually kind of hot right now. Modern calligraphers like (the unbelievably good) Seb Lester have achieved a fair degree of fame thanks to instagram, tumblr, twitter, and similar places where they can share their work. Videos and gifs of calligraphy are especially popular, and especially entrancing.
I have little background in the visual arts - my training is almost all as a scientist. I picked up calligraphy when I was 32, after being gifted a Pilot Parallel Pen by a member of
this very forum in a Secret Santa thingy. I quickly fell completely in love with the art form. It's a very contemplative, mindful pursuit. I find it super relaxing and incredibly useful for calming down my overactive inner monologue. If you think, talk, and/or write fast, calligraphy is a good way to train yourself to slow down a bit. This is my third year practicing calligraphy as a hobby and I can absolutely see how much I have improved with daily practice. I still have a long way to go, but I can see that I keep getting better. My skill jumped pretty dramatically in the past month and it feel so dang good!
For the beginning artist, calligraphy is an attractive form as, at the end of the day, things either look like letters or they don't (of course, some forms are designed for style over legibility, but you know what I mean). If I'm trying to write an elegant G, I can tell right away if it looks right or not. I'm not sure a landscape painting is quite that easy to evaluate. The basic elements of calligraphy - proportions, angles, and curves - are the basic geometric tools of any visual art form, so it's a good place to hone your basic skills. The simplest scripts are actually incredibly difficult to do well. With elaborate forms, versals, or cadels, like I showed up above, poor individual elements can be covered up. Beautiful Italic letters are composed of maybe three or four strokes, so each one has to be perfect. It's deceptively hard to master.
The fountain pen enthusiast will find a lot to love with calligraphy tools that can use their beautiful fountain pen inks. The pens I use are around $10 each, and I have the inks and paper already, so the basic investment to get started is low. If you need paper, Rhodia dotpads provide nice guidance and the paper is great even with the super wet 6.0mm Parallel Pen.
Here are a few of the tools and books I'd recommend as, again, an enthusiastic amateur interested in self study:
I use Pilot Parallel Pens almost exclusively. The pros often use dip pens (although I have never met a calligrapher who did not carry Parallel Pens around. Pros love them too), but they are fussier to use and cannot just be tossed into a bag, filled with ink, to be carried around to impress chicks at Starbucks. I recommend any fountain pen lover try a Parallel Pen, just for funsies.
There are four basic sizes, and a few companies sell another 4 made by altering the basic models. The red cap (1.5mm) is small enough to be used as a basic pen. the largest, blue cap, model (6.0mm) is like writing with a chisel. I recommend the orange cap (2.4mm) to start. It's the easiest to use and gives great variation in the thick and thin directions. The green cap (3.8mm) has become my go-to pen, but is a bit harder to use. The blue cap model is super fun, but is by far the hardest to master. The red cap is also hard to use to full effect.
You can find Parallel Pens at all the usual places. Massdrop sells four sets pretty often (they are almost always in the bazaar, when that is up) for about $25. Individually, they are usually around $12. They take Pilot Mixable Colours inks, or pilot converters. You can also use an O-ring and convert them into ink dropper pens (you fill the entire body with ink).
I really recommend picking up two pens so you can do this cool color-blending technique:
This was all written with one pen, filled with Diamine Blaze Orange ink. The different colors are all the result of color blending.
Note that you can blend ink from a fountain pen into a Parallel Pen, too.
I should note that Parallel Pens are used for BROAD NIB calligraphy (Blackletter, Roman Square Capitals, Italic, etc). I don't practice any pointed nib forms (Copperplate, Spencerian), so look elsewhere for advice there.
My favorite calligraphy book is this one:
(Amazon link)
Mark Drogin gives a funny, readable overview of the history of Western calligraphy and then provides guides to reproducing the styles he discusses. There are some nice plates showing actual historical examples.
Here's my favorite basic calligraphy guidebook:
(Amazon link)
It covers many different styles, including some pointed nib forms, and even discusses topics like cadels.
Margaret Shepherd's books (
Learn Calligraphy, and then a slimmer volume based on a subset of
Learn Calligraphy) are easy to find in bookstores. They are pretty good. She strikes me as a bit stuffy and boring, though.
The Calligrapher's Bible is also easy to find and I think it's a better book.
You can often find calligraphy kits, with a book, some shitty pens, and some paper. Avoid them. Get a Parallel Pen and Mark Drogin's book or
The Calligrapher's Bible instead. The components of the kits are all trash. You'll hate practicing calligraphy if your pens and paper are shit.
I have a zillion books, covering specific topics like flourishing, general guides, books about historic illuminated manuscripts, and collections of scripts. I linked just the two books I would pick up if I were just starting, but I'm happy to list more if anyone is interested. I also have a link to scans of several fantastic, sadly out of print books. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you own the books but don't have them with you), the account also has scans of
The Calligrapher's Bible and a few other books that are very much in print, so I'm not comfortable linking it. Please buy a book if you want to use one! After that, if you are interested in the out of print stuff, message me.
If you have any calligraphy questions, feel free to ask! I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.
