DOMESTIKA COURSE – ENGLISH CALLIGRAPHY – CAPITAL LETTERS
I was too busy and then too tired to do anything in my studio over the past couple of days, but this afternoon I had another session. After practising the strokes for the capital letters and doing some consolidation practice, I was ready to start on the capital letters proper.
Groups of letters
As with the lower case letters, the capitals fall into groups, according to how they are constructed, progressing from easy to more difficult.
Group 1 – B, R and P
These are all very similar, starting with the beauty line, and then adding a spiral. To start with, I tended to make my letters too fat. All of the letters, lower and upper case, are based on ovals, and I forgot about this and made them too round! With some of these letters, it was also quite hard to see how the beginning lined up with the grid. You can see that I have improved as I moved down the sheet.
Group 2 – T and F, and starting Group 3 – D and L
T and F were relatively easy. They were identical except for the cross-bar of the F.
Group 3, D and L, were much more difficult! With the D, the idea is to try and get the swirl on the left of the beauty line the same proportion as the curve on the right, and as usual my tendency was to make the letters too fat. Both D and L were done with a single stroke, but the D is particularly difficult because it involved a longer and more complicated stroke.
Throughout this course, I have found it hard to remember to follow the grid correctly and sometimes started the letters in the wrong place. You can see where this happened with the “D” above, on the third line down – I found I’d only occupied the ascender space and not made the letter big enough. There are a lot of different things to think about all at once, a bit like when you first learn to drive! I remember being really good at steering until it came to changing gear, when the steering went all to pot!
Group 3 continued, and beginning group 4 – C and E
I got better at group 3 with more practice. We also learnt how to add a flourish on the L. The letter L apparently contains the following letters in a word, and the bottom stroke will therefore be lower on a finished piece, to make room for the following lower case letters. I think by this page, I have got a bit better at this group.
The group 4 letters, C and E, were more difficult by an order of magnitude! I thought I was never going to get them right, and I still need to practise a lot more. Getting the curls and spirals correct, and remembering where the pen strokes should be thick or thin, was hard. I also had to keep reminding myself about maintaining the oval shapes in the letters. It is quite hard to see where the teacher is lining her letters up with the grid. I think I shall have to watch the videos again on the laptop, as the iPad screen is rather small.
Nibs and reservoirs
The nib with the reservoir is much better. It means that I don’t have to dip nearly so often. I have to remember to blot off some of the ink, though, or it is much too thick on the page. I think I am getting much more uniform results now. The ink flow seems to stop abruptly rather than fading, which is better.
My new nibs arrived today but they do not have reservoirs. It seems to be quite difficult to buy separate reservoirs unless they are for a particular brand of nib. I have found one, though, but I am not sure if it will fit in my angled pen holder. I’ve got a few YouTube videos lined up to watch, to see what other people do. I found another nib in my box which is identical to the one I am currently using, with a reservoir permanently fitted, so I am glad to have a spare.
Beginning a new artform can be quite difficult. You have to buy materals, but until you’ve done a bit, you don’t really know what you need, so some purchases may end up being a waste of money! Fortunately the pen nibs aren’t too expensive.
