Category: calligraphy

How calligraphy has helped me appreciate life better

Calligraphy is one thing that I am so thankful I have been learning for over 2 years. The effect that it can have ones life is astonishing. For example when you get into calligraphy and learn that you can improve. Also that if you know what you are doing you will get better fast.

Now lets get into the title of the post. Calligraphy has taught me that one: Fail, fail, fail and fail some more. Through the attempts that you have made you will succeed. Also that you have to slow the hell down and appreciate the fine details.
Because with calligraphy there are many fine details. The fine details of the letters, the details of the flourishes are breathtaking.

Second thing calligraphy has taught me is to believe in my work even more. Because when you start learning calligraphy it can be hard to keep at it. The reason is how many people get frustrated and or get bored. If you stick with something and don’t give up you will see little bits of progress.

Seeing the progress is what excites me. When I see how each of my finished calligraphy pieces are better each time gets me motivated more and more. Knowing that I came from producing work that I feel was garbage is great.  I say that its great because I know I did not stop at the top and I worked my way up from the bottom.

The third thing is that I want to get better. Knowing that I am able to improve is wonderful. We as humans love to see growth and us to get better. The only way to get better is to fail often. Because if you are not failing in whatever you are doing you will not get better.

The fourth thing is that you should not get comfortable using the same tools over and over. With calligraphy tools there are many that have been used and some that are more comfortable than others. But I for one know that If I have been using a certain tool too often its time to stop using it.

Calligraphy has helped me as a designer tremendously. There is benefit of using your hands to create compared to not using them at all.

I have an Etsy Shop

Etsy

I have been running my etsy shop for about a month or so now. My Etsy shop is a collection of my calligraphy work and I also do custom calligraphy pieces.

My whole process for doing custom calligraphy pieces is that we will discuss the colors that you would like and also I will send you over a proof before I go forward with printing. The type of paper that I print all of the posters 8.5×11 on is french paper 80# text butcher white paper.

All of the prints are laser printed and are of very pristine quality. There are other pieces that are marked lower in price because they will be sold as is on the original piece of artwork. All of my calligraphy/brush lettering work is solely sold for the artwork and not for reproduction.

I will continue to add more work to my etsy shop in the meantime. I must say it has been a learning curve for me and there’s still a lot for me to learn about etsy. I will overtime make the transition to solely selling all of my work here on jostendooley.com

I want to say thank you for taking the time to read this far and I hope you have a great weekend and a happy holiday.

Experimenting and trying new things

Ever since I started learning calligraphy by myself I never really thought of it in such a large way. Because when you start teaching yourself something you begin to do it out of love. Then further down the road you start to realize what it can become. I have built a good following on instagram and made some good friends as well there.

One person recently told me to make a quote I did recently into a shirt. I was thinking “Josten why did you not already do this!”. My thoughts are I’m doing something for free to help inspire others as well as showing my commitment.

Here is how one of the shirts is going to be printed

 

There is a lot of hand lettering online and everywhere you can imagine. There is also some that is pristine and almost does not look hand done and I tend to always want to keep that aspect of my calligraphy work. Therefore showing the little imperfection brings out the human aspect of it and a more organic feel.

Some other things I have been trying to do a bit more was to test out incorporating a hand lettered aspect of a logo. Since I’ve been doing calligraphy for over a year everyday why the hell not?

Here is one recent project that I started

 

The project is going to be based off of people who Ride the Rails. If you are not familiar with the term its people who ride freight trains. I’m debating whether or not to base it off of a beer company or clothing. But more or less its a fun project. Still have to clean things up a bit with it.

Printed calligraphy posters

I over the past week decided to print a couple versions of my calligraphy work that I done with a brush pen. The chase the vision I did that with Tombow brush pens and the wolf poster I used a pentel brush pen.  These are vectored versions of the original work.

The reason I decided to vector my calligraphy work is mainly because I just felt it was starting to go to waste and I needed to get it out there and share it. Also I will improve my photoshop/illustrator skills in the meantime.

These posters are hanging in my bedroom office to inspire and remind me to focus. Believe it or not there is a great feeling when you have your own work hanging in your office.

Lifes a Wheel of Fortune

 

When we take the time to think about it life is really a wheel of fortune. At times we get a chance to spin it and other times we are waiting our turn. When we do get a turn we tend to not spin the wheel as hard as we can. Then we end up on something that we could really careless about. So when it is your turn to spin the wheel make sure you spin it as hard as you can.

These are weekly videos that I have been doing for about a month so far. I upload them every Monday (well when I manage time correctly). I may do one in real time and show the full process. Which would be a good thing for you all to see how my process is.

Below is the completed piece.

Why Pemanship matters and you should improve your handwriting

Penmanship matters more than ever now. Whether or not you think what does it matter everything is digital now. How would you look being an adult and having the handwriting of a child. Then if you have a situation where you do not have an electronic device to write you will be shit out of luck.

Which means you will struggle writing and holding a pen correctly. Also someones handwriting can say things about them without speaking. Honestly if I wrote my name and it looked as if I wrote it with my knuckles you’d wonder about me. Then you would question my intelligence and other things about me.

I remember when teachers gave lessons on practicing handwriting. The lessons for homework were in cursive. Writing in cursive is such a relaxing and enjoyable thing. Writing in cursive allows you write faster and develop better control with writing instruments.

Having beautiful penmanship will show in your signature and apply in other areas of your life. One thing that is disappointing is when you see someone who is not capable of signing their name and instead they only know how to print their name. Penmanship matters because it shows someone that you care. Also it shows you have took the time to improve the little things in your life.