Getting Caught Up

Ugh, I let this place slip the last couple days, so now I need to play catch up.  Well, here is a little something I have been working on for the last couple letters.  I looked at some of the old calligraphy materials on different websites, and one of the things that I found was sometimes the writers would use the basic swoops and other pen movements of calligraphy and produce these amazing pieces of artwork.  They were sometimes just ornamental, but they also did some very complex things like birds.  It is called flourishing. Examples:

Now, I think that this is some amazing work, but here are my problems.  First, while I have a cheap calligraphy pen, I can't even write properly with it let alone do this.  Second, I don't think that I would have the skills to do these, even if I could write properly.  So, I have been trying out some different techniques to replicate this without the need of using a calligraphy pen.  Here are some of my recent efforts plus some exercises I was trying to do to work on my hand coordination.

Two from a letter and an envelope:

And one of just some doodles from class:

I like the second one best out of all of these.  I am using different pens to simulate different sizes that would normally be produced by the pen nib as well as varying pressure with the finer sharpie pens.  I hope to continue experimenting with this.  I plan to look for different pens and maybe a pencil as well to try.

Well, I only have one reader right now, and I think I know who you are ;) so let me know what you think, and any suggestions for drawings that I could try.  Otherwise there are just going to be a lot of little plants that look a little like ferns!

Also, totally slacking on my one life list goal right now.  I need some motivation :(