Thursday, February 12, 2009

Spencerian training

On the top of my long list of things I want to learn how to do is calligraphy. I did some searches online and found Ron Tate who gave me a little two hour lesson and I bought a book to try to learn Spencerian calligraphy, which looks like this (see more here):




































I know, ridiculous right? I'm pretty excited about it. He showed me an antique scrapbook from people who were Master Penman as a full-time job and it totally blew my mind. So much practice. All of the letters look exactly the same. The simple cursive writing looked computer generated it was so exactly right. I have a lot of practicing to do. Ron was the nicest guy in the world. He also let me buy some antique clerical nibs (that you can't buy anywhere else) regular people used to write with so I can use those to write in my regular writing but make it look old-fashiony.
If anyone wants something calligraphied in my regular handwriting, I'm totally up for it. Just let me know. It isn't very good yet, but kind of whimsical:

4 comments:

The Payne family said...

I like your calligraphy! We had a calligraphy week in an art class in like middle school and it was my favorite! I thought I was pretty good back then. Chances are I probably wasn't....oh well.

hanner said...

I've always wondered how people went about learning calligraphy! I mean, I know the elementary level from long ago but it's not refined AT ALL, and this calligraphy is so much more beautiful. Thanks for the tip!

linsey said...

WOW ash, that is lovely! i want you to write something for me. i just have to think of what that might be...

libby said...

http://www.iampeth.com/books.php