Major Project Week Two - Writing Some Letters

                For my second week of working on calligraphy for my major project, I started with the basics. The book I bought had a page full of practice strokes to make. I started with some notebook paper, and one of the Sharpie calligraphy markers I bought. I didn’t want to waste the good expensive paper on my very first attempts at calligraphy, and I also wanted the guidelines that notebook paper could give me.

Here’s a picture of my attempts at both the practice strokes of general calligraphy, and of Sans Serif, the font I chose to work with. 

Not very good. Even without seeing the exact way it’s supposed to look (I don’t want to take pictures from my book and then upload them here), you can see the inconsistencies in the same shapes. I was really struggling to hold the marker at the 35 degree angle necessary for this script.

But this is my first time, so I soldiered on.  I practiced the letters of Sans Serif several times, which actually ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Getting the angles and motions right is a struggle, especially since this is “an art” and I am most definitely not an artist. Here’s a shot of my first and second tries. 

It did get a bit better the second time. I started to get a feel for how to do them, though I’m still nowhere even near being right. I was still struggling with holding the pen at the correct angle.

Next week, I plan to continue practicing with this font. I want to try to make it look better, and try writing some words and not just the alphabet. I am also considering trying to use the actual pens my calligraphy book came with instead of the calligraphy Sharpie, because there's a chance using the real pen could improve my style.