Calligraphy

I started exploring the world of calligraphy as part of personal development for Gaisce the Presidents Award. If you have never heard of this thing do not worry. It is an Irish programme created to encourage young people to develop their personalities and challenge themselves (I got the award!). There are three parts of it, personal, physical and community involvment. It takes 13 weeks each and additional 13 weeks on any of them, when the whole process is confirmed it is then signed by the president. I was taught or supervised by my art teacher. He gave me books and I had to practice at least an hour per week. I have to admit that I didn't know where to start, my letters were all varying sizes and shapes. I had no experience but soon I started enjoying making backgrounds for poems or quotes. It takes a lot of time to become familiar with the pen and do it well. I will show you some of my first work later on :) .

My favourite style of writing was Flourished Italic because it looks really neat and decorative. It is also a good font for beginners and a good hand practice.

Another interesting font is Gothic, it looks really powerful. It is hard to do but with practice it becomes easier. There is a lot of fancy pens you can use, when I started I used pencil, then ordinary pen, roller tip pen, fountain pen and paint brush.

Here you go, one of my first works

I used watercolour paints and wax crayon for the background and a fountain pen for the writing

For this one I used watercolour for the background and a roller tip pen for the writing