Major Project Week 1 - Getting Started on Calligraphy

                 When I was about nine years old, I went to the public library in downtown Akron with my grandma. In the children’s section, I got a book about calligraphy. If you google calligraphy, you get the definition “the art of producing decorative handwriting or lettering with a pen or brush.” Simply put, it’s pretty writing. When I got the book, I didn’t realize you needed special pens and paper to learn how to do it, so it went untouched and returned. For my major project, I’m going back to calligraphy and finally learning how to write in it.

            I’ve done some googling, and found a subreddit on reddit.com completely about calligraphy, with a FAQ that was very helpful. It says it can take 1-2 months of daily practice to become intermediate at calligraphy, and years to master. Working full time and also being a full time student, I’m obviously not going to have the time to dedicate every single day to learning calligraphy. My goal is to become proficient – able to make the letters well and do some writing without issues. I hope I can keep up practicing following this class, because my mom is getting married in May and I’d love to be able to help her make things she needs in a pretty script (calligraphy jargon for font).

I made a word cloud using Tagul full of words about calligraphy in the shape of a calligraphy pen. It's small, but I think it's pretty good and is a nice example of what I'm trying to do, make art with words.

            To prepare for this project, I got on amazon and searched calligraphy for beginners. What I ended up buying was this book. It included a beginners guide, some paper, and pens. The reviews said the pens weren’t the best, and since I’m not looking to go into professional calligraphy anytime soon, I just bought a set of sharpie calligraphy markers to get started. 

There is a lot of supplies needed if you are truly dedicated to writing in calligraphy, but being kinda broke like most people my age, I just got the essentials to get me started. Here we go!