After attending the first Calligraphy Workshop session, I was very intrigued when I found out about the second event happening. Prior to taking the sessions, I had never taking a calligraphy class, instead I grew up practicing script. During the first class, I spent most of the time trying to relate the same rules and visual shapes to script and adapting these rules to a different type of pen. While attending the second one I thought more about the feeling of the letters and worked with the pen instead of forcing the pen to do what I wanted it to do. Overall it was a very relaxing experience and allowed me to take a break from this stressful semester.

Although this was the second calligraphy workshop as part of the series, this was the first workshop I attended and registered for. I was pleasantly surprised with what calligraphy was. Although I have heard of this art, I have never gone out of my way to watch videos of it online and certainly not practice it for an hour. I quickly learned that my technique was very off and calligraphy is very complicated. I largely practiced writing the alphabet during my time, and even then saw many improvements that could be made. I was happy to be provided equipment for I have been practicing here and there since then to improve my technique. This was a great experience, and has proven to be very relaxing and quite fun for me!

Despite having attended the first calligraphy workshop and having some prior experience, I found it harder for my to produce calligraphy letters during this workshop. I believe that this is due to the fact that I was using an entirely different pen. During the first part of the workshop, I used the pen that was more firm and did not bend much to pressure (I’m not sure what it is called). During the second part of the workshop, I used the softer pen that is more brush-like. Despite me having previously believing that using a softer pen would serve to my advantage, I found that it was harder to maintain neat penmanship while using a softer pen. As a result, my letters came out looking more messy. Halfway through the workshop I switched to the firmer pen. This made me realize how unappreciative I was during the first part of the workshop because I didn’t think that my pen was the best for me. I do believe that I can master calligraphy with both styles of pen because I was able to do so with at least one. Because of this, this workshop has taught me to be patient with myself.

Like many people, I like looking at pretty things. Pretty flowers, pretty paintings, pretty buildings, pretty birds. So many things in life have been carefully crafted to showcase beauty. I didn’t come to appreciate that this could extend even to the most boring things in life, like handwriting, until I started learning cursive in elementary school and saw the potential of turning plain letters into something more.

Since starting college, I’ve gotten more used to using cursive while jotting down notes and solving problems sets– not because it looks better, but because it’s just time-saving. (Picking up a pencil to start a new letter is a lot of work and takes a lot of time, I know.) But how should cursive be used to show more than the answer to a gear ratio problem or notes on how likely it is that Johnny consumes 50 apples in one day? The answer lies in calligraphy– the visual art of writing!

Attending the Calligraphy Workshop reminded me of the reason I was first drawn to cursive– because it makes simple words look pretty. While I still am far from mastering the calligraphy techniques that accomplish this, I now have a stronger foundation in transforming notes, cards, labels, etc. into a visual adventure that will draw people deeper into the content and effort that goes behind the things I write. Calligraphy truly is the art of beautifying words. It is a skill I hope more people will learn and take advantage of– calligraphy can make anything pretty!

I was fortunate enough to participate the second calligraphy event. I was really looking forward to attending this event as I had a great experience in the first part of the same event that was held a few weeks ago. I am proud to say that I can see the progress I have made since the last session. More specifically, compared to the previous session, I could feel that I had more control in as I was holding my brush when writing my name in cursive with varying thickness of strokes. I also noticed that I was able to connect from letter to letter more smoothly. One thing I know I can continue practicing on is to try and make my lettering size more proportionate looking as the first letter (which tends to be capital) is usually a lot bigger than the remaining lower-cased letters. Another thing I can work on is writing in a straight line as I tend to write my words at an upward tilted angle.

This was the second calligraphy workshop as part of the series. After having attended the first one, I knew I wanted to get further instruction on how to write. By this point, I could write my name, but was unfamiliar with the letters outside of my own name. For this reason I was really glad to see a continuation of the first workshop.

For this workshop, I was able to really refine my technique. At this point I knew that the brushes I had wouldn’t hold me back from creating really beautiful letter strokes; if anything, varied types of paper could produce more of the varied appearances I was looking for. I spent more time working, with a new set of pens and paper from GRF Seema. And at the end of the session, I was really proud of my progress!

This past Sunday, I attended another calligraphy workshop with GRF Seema.  Once again, we watched some introductory calligraphy tutorial videos, specifically on lettering, and then moved into 30-45 minutes of writing on our own.  At the end, we did some reflecting on what was difficult and what was easy for each of us.

As I said in my last blog post about calligraphy, this was a really relaxing experience; it was a particularly good way to decompress before the next week, which is prelim week and thus packed full of long assignments and tests for many people.  Doing smooth hand motions over and over is certainly therapeutic and helped me relieve some of the stress that had been hanging on me.  I’m excited for a Part 3 at some point!

(Originally posted 3/17/21 on the Fall 2020 blog)

I went to both calligraphy events, so it was nice to practice some more and try out new techniques. This time I used a brush pen (I used a chiseled pen last time), so I could compare the different effects they could make. The specialized tips made it easier to write in different styles. For example, I thought that using the brush pen made it easier to vary the thickness of the letters more gradually, but the chisel was good for other styles such as with gothic style fonts. Also as a side note, I liked the playlist we listened to while we worked!

Participating in the second part of the calligraphy workshop was a lot of fun.  My suitemates and I all sat together and tried to write.  My one friend and I had participated in the other workshop and were comparing how our new pen which we heard was good for calligraphy compared to the different pen style that we got last time, which had gotten several comments about being difficult to write with.  Having gotten used to that pen which required a specific angle to work with the chiseled pen tip to make the calligraphy look pretty, the new pen, a brush pen, was much more difficult  for me to work with.  I had not yet developed the skills to regulate how much pressure I put on the pen depending on whether I was doing a down stroke.  While all my strokes looked similar, it was a fun experience seeing how everyone else worked with the brush pen.  I cannot wait until I have time over the summer to continue to work on my calligraphy!

Although it took a few times to get the hang of it, learning calligraphy was very fun and relaxing. I was very calmed by the smoothness of the marker gliding on the paper. It was also very satisfying to trace over the templates and make really nicely written phrases.

Once again it was so hard to get the strokes right. It was not as stressful as last time because I had a better pen this time and that made it much easier to work on the strokes. The hardest part for me was the upstrokes going from letter to letter. I am not a very patient person so I do not know if I will ever really have the time to just sit still and work on it. However, I did enjoy I much better this week!

Today I did the second calligraphy workshop. It still surprises me how difficult even what seems like the most basic calligraphy is. I am definitely not an artist normally so I don’t have the muscle memory and fine motor skills required to make deft lines. I spent my whole time just drawing a basic swoop trying to get those darned upstrokes to look right. I felt comforted at the end when others also shared that they had difficulties with the upstrokes. Despite being absolute rubbish at calligraphy I still really enjoy it. I find it relaxing just looking at the page and focusing on a single line at a time, and the repetitive nature of it is relaxing. And getting a really a cool brush pen to use in an amazing hot pink color was lots of fun. Using a brush pens is so different to a normal pen and I found it surprising just how much control is needed to make a line look good. Anytime you watch a pro do it it seems so simple but like all pros, they make it look far easier than it actually is. Looking forward to any other calligraphy workshops that are done in the future.

This Sunday, I attended Part 2 of the Calligraphy Workshop. It is safe to say I am slowly but surely improving on my calligraphy one letter at a time. A general consensus from other attendees was that the upward strokes was difficult, and I wholeheartedly agree. As I was practicing, I ran into trouble with the amount of pressure I would put into each stroke. Transitioning from a thick downward stroke to a thin upward stroke was particularly hard because of the varying pressure I had to put in order for there to be a noticeable difference. For me personally, this added an extra stress on me since I did not want my calligraphy to portray any marks that may show any hesitation.

Moving forward as I embark on my calligraphy journey, one key lesson that I was presented with and will always remember is to add my own personality into it. By this, it can go deeper than the way one may write their calligraphy; it can also be with the emphasis I put on different letters. I may try to make my calligraphy my own by drifting away from cursive calligraphy and trying another font.

This Sunday, I joined other members of Rose for a calligraphy workshop. Though I have never done calligraphy before, I was excited to try it out. We started with basic lettering where we followed the basic principle of light on the up strokes and thick on the down strokes. I found that it was really difficult doing the up strokes as everything I wrote came out quite thick. After a lot of practice, I definitely found that I was getting better though. Additionally, it was actually quite relaxing to do different letterings and take a break from my homework. Overall, it was a lot of fun trying out calligraphy. Though I know that I still need a lot of practice, I am excited to continue trying it out!