Tarale Draws!

seblester:

Rather a lot of people have been asking about tools and how to get started in calligraphy. This post is an amalgam of information I’ve posted before on Facebook, Tumblr and elsewhere online.

Firstly I can recommend some good books. ‘Foundations of Calligraphy’ by Sheila Waters and ‘The Calligrapher’s Handbook’ by Heather Child. ‘The Speedball Textbook’ is also a good and inexpensive source of inspiration and instruction for beginners.

Choosing calligraphy tools is a very subjective business. It all amounts to personal preferences and circumstances. If you go to a specialist calligraphy supplier they are unlikely to sell bad tools but they may sell tools that don’t suit you for one reason or another. For example a very good calligraphy tutor recommended nibs that didn’t suit me because I’m relatively heavy handed.

I think the tools listed below would suit most people wanting to give calligraphy a try. They reflect my personal needs as someone who does a lot of calligraphy away from my desk in cafes, libraries, on trains, in parks. They’re a trade off between practicality and performance. I can’t sit in Caffè Nero with a goose quill and a pot of ink I made myself to a medieval recipe. People would think I was a lunatic.

‘Manuscript’ brand calligraphy fountain pens are cheap, widely available and convenient. I started with those and still use them today. Pilot Parallel Pens are great fun and easy to use. They’re also easy to carry around and don’t clog easily or need constant cleaning or refilling like traditional metal nibs. The main trade off is a slight loss of crispness, which becomes more pronounced the smaller the nibs get. Mitchell Copperplate pens are a great starting point for everyone asking about pointed pen calligraphy because they’re not too sharp and so don’t get stuck in paper as easily as finer nibs. I’d recommend trying a variety of nibs though and finding out what works for you. As I say it is a subjective business and other calligraphers would probably recommend completely different pens. As you progress you’ll want to experiment and find your own path, but I think these tools are a good starting point and I still use them all today.

I don’t often reblog things to my art blog, but for those of you who are following my calligraphy and would like to have a go yourself, the information above is great.

I also recommend the Pilot Parallel pens—they’re lovely. :)