Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant
Empower your team to innovate on demand. Melissa Dinwiddie helps tech leaders Create the Impossible™ through playful, interactive workshops and keynotes. Unlock breakthrough creativity today.
Hey letter-lover,
There’s an important announcement down below about the future of this newsletter, so if you’re in a hurry, scroll down.
Otherwise, read on…
A week ago I had just come home from my 4th annual Create & Incubate Retreat, where I made art and did lots of calligraphy.
Most of which I shared on my @calligraphyhowto Instagram account.
Honestly, I wasn’t planning on spending [Read more…]
One of the things that creates beauty in formal calligraphy (i.e., calligraphy based on historical models, rather than expressive, experimental, “modern calligraphy”) is consistency.
Not only must every “a” be as identical as possible to every other “a,” but the letters in a particular script must feel like they belong together. As if they are members of the same family.
What makes letters feel like they belong to the same family?
Certainly consistency of size, weight, pen angle (where applicable), letter slant, and relationship to the baseline/waistline are all important.
In addition, and intimately related to the above, [Read more…]
Hey Letter-Lover,
Do you ever feel frustrated with your lettering? Like it’s never going to be as good as you want it to be?
Boy, I sure do! Story of my LIFE!
In fact, I was sharing in my Creative Sandbox community just this week that nothing brings out my perfectionist gremlins like calligraphy!
Letters are such small, precise forms. A half a millimeter in this direction or that could throw everything off!
Yes, precision is wonderful. And yes, mastery and excellence are great to aim for.
But they are not everything!
If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?
Truth: part of [Read more…]
Wondering what supplies you’ll need to get started with brush calligraphy? The good news is, the necessary supplies are pretty minimal.
All you really need are two things: pens and paper. Really!
In fact, here’s the TL;DR version of this post (all links in this post are affiliate links, btw):
My Favorite Brush Marker Calligraphy Pens
My Favorite Paper for Brush Marker Calligraphy
Any of the following:
Add in just a couple of other inexpensive and easy-to-obtain items to make life easier (guidelines and Scotch Removable Tape), and you’ve got all you’ll need to keep you busy — and develop your skills — for a long time.
These are the supplies that I provide my students with when I teach in-person brush calligraphy workshops, because I’ve used them myself with great results. I know my students will experience the least amount of frustration possible if they stick with these materials.
Once you’ve got some basic chops under your belt, then you can expand out and experiment with other materials, like real bristle brushes!
[Read more…]
So you want to learn calligraphy? And you want to get good at it quickly? There’s no “instant download” shortcut, alas, but this series of articles will tell you how to get better faster.
Whether you want to learn brush lettering, pointed pen calligraphy (Copperplate, Spencerian, or more modern styles), Italic, Uncial, Blackletter, or any other calligraphy or lettering style, I’m sure you know it takes practice.
But not just any practice. Effective practice.
Good practice habits lead to beautiful letterforms. Follow these tips, and you’ll get better at calligraphy a lot faster.
Practice makes permanent (not necessarily perfect!), so in order to develop good habits it is most important to [Read more…]
