Category: calligraphy

The Reason I love Calligraphy

First off I’d like to say I started learning calligraphy seriously about 4 years. I will never forget one of my professors in college telling me I have terrible hand skills. Because if she did not tell me that I’d probably would not have improved to the level I am at now.The documenting of my calligraphy work has been fun.

The way we see our work improving in all aspects is invigorating. Also learning to stop being so hard on our self is not an easy thing to do. I learned that I am hard on myself because I expect more from myself.

Calligraphy has taught me how to layout my typography work a lot better than before. Also learning stronger how to apply the principles of hierarchy as well. I did learn these skills in design school, but there is a difference between a classroom and then applying it to the real world applications.

Calligraphy taught me to not settle for the first attempt and if its good do one more. As well as to slow down and focus on the task at hand. There’s many times we have so many ideas. The flooding of ideas can be overwhelming and cause someone to get lost and not finish much.But the main thing is to not get lost with creating and not finishing what you start.

How I learned to Flourishes with Calligraphy

Learning how to write calligraphy and apply flourishes was one of the hardest things to master. I will say I am still mastering it. Because flourishes are decorative elements to jazz up a piece. By Jazz up I making the piece look luxurious and elegant.

The way that I really improved my flourishing was by studying other work I came across. The act of studying and seeing what others have done helps a lot. Because learning from others you begin to develop a better eye for what works and what does not.

The video above goes into how I went about learning how to flourish and what I have done to improve and continuously improve.

Getting featured on periscope while streaming calligraphy

 

The past week I had tried out streaming my morning practice sessions on periscope. Because if you don’t follow me on snapchat and Instagram you’d know I post what I’m working on every morning (most of the time ). I loved how it happened organically and I wasn’t fully awake and aware what getting featured meant.
Because I was just hanging out with friends and just doing what I usually do. Then I get a notification saying you’ve been featured and then another saying that periscopetv has retweeted your stream.
Immediately I got nervous and was thinking to hard about what I was doing. Because imagine going from having like 5-6 people viewing then it goes up to 80 then 100 in a matter of minutes. Something like that happening was great for me to see. I say that it was great to get featured and I’m thankful for periscope taking the time to do such a thing for me.
There honestly is nothing I did to get featured other than stayed consistent with streaming and just having fun.
You shouldn’t be so focused on having immediate success. Just focus on building one brick at a time. While building you have to have patience.

How to critique calligraphy work pt 2

Here is part two of the two part series I created on how to critique calligraphy work. This a way that I go about critiquing the calligraphy work that I do. The process of learning how to see the fine details and why something is working vs not working takes time to develop such a skill.

Enjoy