COMPLETION OF THE CALLIGRAPHY FLOURISHES COURSE
This five-day course has taken me nearly three weeks to complete! Somehow I wasn’t able to get down to it and work at it every day. There has been quite a lot going on recently and in between, I have been too tired to go in the studio.
The course is called “Simple to Spectactular” and is run by Loveleigh Loops (I love that name – the alliteration rolls off the tongue!), a website run by twin sisters. They have a number of different courses some of which are free, like this one.
We were taught what flourishes were, where they could be placed, and various rules about their structure. As with all English calligraphy/copperplate, the whole structure is based on ovals, and the same applies to these beautiful embellishments. You have to watch the thicks and thins so that you don’t get two thicks crossing one another, and each crossing should be approximately at right angles.
Our first assignment
Without any instruction or prior experience, we had to write “[Your name]’s flourishing journey,” and add flourishes as we thought appropriate. Here is mine.
The first lessons were all about practice drills, drawing curves and spirals, as we did for the Domestika course. These practice exercises are also reallly good as warm-ups.
Progress
Through the course, we learnt how flourishes worked in the middle of words and at the end, and how they were different when they were above or below the word. Here are some examples of my practice pieces.
The final project
This was a repeat of the first exercise, but with the benefit of everything we’d learnt in the course. My first example was done with the aid of the large grid provided by the course, using my light panel.
I redid this on my own 3/16-in grid, this time using my calligraphy fountain pen, so it’s at a smaller scale.
Finally, a comparison between my very first effort and my final project.
I realise I’ve got a long way to go, with plenty more practice, until I can call myself fully competent in the writing of copperplate calligraphy! In the meantime, I need a bit of a break to do something completely different.
