Back in medieval times they made the lines visible, it was a sign of luxury that you took the time and effort to make proper lines, and they wanted to show it. Then they started making lines with something that made an indentation into the page, it’s not visible unless you look closely. Now the norm is to either draw faint pencil lines and then erasing them, or to use a guide under.
thanks for taking the time to reply. calligraphy is the one thing I admire, knowing I’d never be able to do it myself, so it’s always nice to get the behind-the-scenes.
Just keep using the internet, I guess, you won’t be able to escape the inspiration eventually.
I’ve never been able to draw. To the degree that I think there’s actually something missing in my head. I have a hard time visualizing things in my mind. Do you start out knowing the final picture or do you add things along the way?
The thing about calligraphy is that the things that look impressive, some swashy gothic letters, they can be learned quite easily. The hardest part is the regular upper case latin alphabet, it requires a lot of pen angle finesse and since we are so used to seeing those letters, anything less than perfect stands out immediately. A common piece of advice to calligraphers is to let go of the idea that one is writing. My regular handwriting is hardly legible, the muscle memory is too ingrained. I think of it as drawing letters. Still, I can’t draw actual things.
I do actually have a lined paper under :)
Back in medieval times they made the lines visible, it was a sign of luxury that you took the time and effort to make proper lines, and they wanted to show it. Then they started making lines with something that made an indentation into the page, it’s not visible unless you look closely. Now the norm is to either draw faint pencil lines and then erasing them, or to use a guide under.
I wish I had a source of inspiration like you do.
thanks for taking the time to reply. calligraphy is the one thing I admire, knowing I’d never be able to do it myself, so it’s always nice to get the behind-the-scenes.
Just keep using the internet, I guess, you won’t be able to escape the inspiration eventually.
I’ve never been able to draw. To the degree that I think there’s actually something missing in my head. I have a hard time visualizing things in my mind. Do you start out knowing the final picture or do you add things along the way?
The thing about calligraphy is that the things that look impressive, some swashy gothic letters, they can be learned quite easily. The hardest part is the regular upper case latin alphabet, it requires a lot of pen angle finesse and since we are so used to seeing those letters, anything less than perfect stands out immediately. A common piece of advice to calligraphers is to let go of the idea that one is writing. My regular handwriting is hardly legible, the muscle memory is too ingrained. I think of it as drawing letters. Still, I can’t draw actual things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEp-7cHc1uc
That is the exact thing that came to my mind as well.