Wrapping Up My Major Project

            The time has come to wrap up my major project, and this Ed Tech blog as a whole. Teaching myself calligraphy was a lot more annoying and also a lot more rewarding than I thought it would be.

          Here is a collage I made on picmonkey of my starting and final attempts at calligraphy.

           Here are my final attempts at calligraphy for this project. My penmanship has improved so much, and despite the mistakes I still am making, I've improved a lot. 

            It was not without trial and error along the way. Example, here’s my attempt once I finally got a pen to work.

Obviously not going as well as the markers do. I could not manipulate the thickness of the line the way I can with a marker, and still could not consistently get the pen to work.

This was a fun project to do, and was something I could easily do while I was watching reruns of Friends on Netflix in the evening. There was a lot of frustration, especially in the beginning, but this is something I think I’ve personally become pretty decent at over the last few weeks. I could definitely see myself working on this as a hobby, especially when it comes time for my mom’s wedding and she needs help doing things such as table number cards.

To summarize my project, I made a concept map full of things about calligraphy using bubbl.us.

Major Project Week 5 - Finishing Up With My Book

            This week is the final week of “real” new work on my major project. This week, I did my best with the last four fonts left in my calligraphy book.

            The first script I worked on was called Black Letter. This one is one of the fanciest, most complicated scripts I have worked on yet. I did my practice strokes as always, then the alphabet, then some words.

            After doing the first script was when I decided to try my hand at every script left in the book. For these three scripts, I just did the alphabet.

The second script I did was called Chancery. This one is a little plainer, but not quite as “plain,” or as I like to call it, classic, as Sans Serif.

The third script is called Uncial. It is also a more classic, uncomplicated script. However, it is supposed to have very thick lines. If the calligraphy pens I have actually worked and I was not using calligraphy markers I might have had more success, but I was unable to get as thick of lines as I wanted.

The final script left in my book is called Batarde. I struggled with some of the letters, but I think overall they look pretty good.

I finally brought out the nice paper that came with my calligraphy set. It was actually a bit harder to write on than the notebook paper I’ve been using thus far. I felt as though my lines were not as smooth, and I had to go over them a few times. Though it’s (clearly) not perfect, and there are some mistakes obviously made, I think I’ve made pretty good progress in the past few weeks.

To wrap up my major project next week, I’m going to try one last time to use my fancy calligraphy pens, and I intend to write something in every font I’ve tried.

Major Project Week 4 - Some More Sans Serif, and Roman

            I think this week learning about calligraphy went pretty well. I love Sans Serif, and I’m getting a lot better at it. I started with doing a practice sheet of the alphabet again, and as always, there were some mistakes.

            I then wrote out a couple of pages. I’m getting to the point I don’t need to be looking at the book for each individual pen stroke anymore, I just check every once in a while to make sure I’m doing my letters the right way.

            Since Sans Serif was going well, I decided to move on to Roman, the next script in my book. I started with the practice strokes again.

            After the practice strokes, I practiced the alphabet in Roman script. This script has serifs attached to a lot of the letters, and making a serif with a marker is pretty hard, and looks pretty messy. You can see the spots on the serifs on the letters when I went over a few too many times and it looks darker than the rest. The serifs also aren’t the best. You have to round the corners, which is harder than it looks because of how big the marker I’m using is. If I was using a pen, it might be easier, but I still can’t get the pens that came with the kit to work. Guess I should’ve listened to the Amazon reviews and not trusted the pens. Good thing I bought the markers just in case.

           

            After practicing the uppercase alphabet, I realized there was no lowercase alphabet in Roman script in my book. I decided to just write some words, and made up lowercase letters as I went. It was not easy.

            In all of the pictures, you can see the darker spots where I struggled with the Serifs. In this picture, I was concentrating too hard on my letters and accidentally wrote the same thing over and over. Oops.

            Today, I determined that I like Sans Serif better than Roman. Serifs are not for me.

            Next week, I’m going to go through the rest of my book and see what other scripts there are.

Major Project Week 3 - Continuing with Sans Serif

            This week went a bit better than last week, if I do say so myself. It did start with a setback. Last week, I said I was going to try to use the pens with ink that came with my calligraphy set. I did try. However, I did not succeed. Here's the way the pens come in the kit.

 To use the pen, you had into insert an ink cartridge into the barrel of the pun and puncture it so ink could flow. I did puncture it, then shook it to try and get the ink flowing. I spent about ten minutes trying to use the pen. It worked a little bit, but I just could not get a steady flow out of it. I could barely get lines out of it most of the time. I marked up an entire piece of paper trying to get the pen to work before I gave up and used another Sharpie calligraphy marker. 

            I did some practice strokes again, and practiced my alphabet.

            I then just started writing. First, since Friends was playing on Netflix, I wrote out all of their names just as some word practice.

            Second, I recently put up my Christmas decorations (I don’t even care that it’s only November 6^th, the holiday season starts right after Halloween for me), I just did a bunch of Christmas words.

Then, I started writing sentences. I wrote “Bernadette Grady’s Educational Technology Major Project.”

            Then finally, I wrote “For my major project, I am teaching myself how to write in Calligraphy. This is Sans Serif Script.”

            I think that since last week, I have improved a lot. My flow is better, and my letters aren’t as disjointed. There’s definitely still room for improvement, Though these are repeat pictures, here's a collage I made on pixlr of last week and this week's progress, and I think my progress is evident.

Sometimes I feel like my writing is like that of a child who is still learning how to write properly. I guess I kind of am, since writing in calligraphy is a whole new style of writing with certain ways to hold the pen/marker. With letters that aren't the right size and are just shaped wrong, it's a little discouraging. But I am showing some definite progress since I started, and I think I’m getting there. Next week, I hope to improve my flow a little bit, and keep consistent with my sizing. If all goes well, I intend to move onto the next script in my beginner's book, Roman. 

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.

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!