Welcome to my first post!
To kick it off, I thought I’d share with you how I picked up calligraphy.
I remember growing up I had this (cool) gold fountain pen and I loved it! I don’t think I knew what calligraphy was at the time though; to me it was just a cool gold ink pen that wrote very differently from your regular ballpoint pens. One day that pen broke, it was non-repairable and that was the end of that. Oh how I wish the hoarder in me let me keep it then. And now thinking back to all those bubble letter days and doodles I did in class, was that considered lettering? Hmm..
Fast forward to 2016, where I started to see more and more calligraphers on social media posting their awesome writings with the nib pen. And one day I stumbled on a workshop a local calligrapher was offering and got a friend to sign up for it with me. We finished the class and both took home a nib, a nib holder, a few practice sheets, along with the basic techniques. I parked the new hobby for a bit as I waited for the birth of my baby.
It wasn’t until a few months later after I had my daughter Kristen that i truly practiced writing. All you mama's out there would know and agree how precious those nap times are #mamasfreetime! I was blessed with a great sleeper that would allow me 2-3 *insert exclamation marks* unbroken hours to practice sheets and sheets of the alphabets.
Instead of the ink and nib, I practiced with crayon washable markers. They first looked like this:
After sheets and sheets of not-so-pretty alphabets, I got more excited when they looked more refined, a little more promising like this:
I’m not a patient person (you can tell when you look at my normal writing, it usually starts off neat and midway becomes chicken scratch). Calligraphy is the opposite of that; every stroke takes patience. With more and more practice, they now look like this consistently:
So, if you’re wondering if you can do it, you sure can! My calligraphy and lettering journey has just begun as I continue to develop my own style and perfect those strokes. Remember, practice makes progress!
If there is something new you want to learn or something old you want to relearn, go for it because you will never know how far you can go until you make the move.