Heart shaped fudge and other stories.

Last Wednesday saw me pootling off to my first calligraphy evening class. Having never been to an evening class before I didn't quite know what to expect, but the group was small and friendly and made me feel very welcome. We spent the evening working on Blackletter or Gothic script, which I enjoyed immensely. I felt fairly comfortable with this hand, possibly because you can be relatively heavy-handed with it and it doesn't really show.

My first attempts at Blackletter

As you can see, my first attempts weren't too disgraceful, and by the end of the evening I was beginning to get the hang of the little hariline flicks on some of the letters too. What I found really interesting was how closely ths script corresponded to the needs of the language; for example the letters K, X and Z weren't in use at the time, and it really shows - these letters feel wrong and difficult to construct within the context of the blackletter miniscule alphabet.

This week we're going to be looking at the Italic hand, which is something that I've been having a go at recently anyway.  I've decided, in my bid to master one thing at a time, that I'll continue with my efforts in Italic and put the Blackletter to one side until I'm happier with my Italic script. To this end I've been trying to practise every day for half an hour or an hour by writing in a journal which should eventaully be nice to flick through and see my progress:

There are some nice bits in here, but I was really tired by this point (having spent some time trying to perfect the inside of a valentines card) and it shows. Slant and nib angle are not consistent, but hopefully this will be rectified to a certain extent by the imminent arrival of a new easel which should mean I'm less cramped when writing. The word 'calligraphic' here is probably the highlight, being the most consistent. The passage is taken from the book I'm using to help with learning Italic.

And finally, I just wanted to share with you this beautiful heart-shaped fudge made for me and my fiance (in return for a carrot cake) by our friend Lance. We arrived home one morning to find it balanced precariously in our letter box :-)

What a sweetie!

Here goes...

Today I am very excited by the prospect of going to my first Calligraphy evening class. Having dabbled for some months now, I've decided to 'get help'! I've almost finished teaching myself the Copperplate alphabet (miniscules) and have suddenly got distracted by the thought that I really ought to master Italic, and develop a suitably lovely cursive hand into the bargain too. Getting distracted by the next project before really getting to grips with the original one is par for the course with me, but I'm hoping that going to a class and getting some direction will help keep me on the narrow at least, if not the straight.

Hopefully there will pictures of my progress a-plenty in the coming weeks. There'll certainly be lots of inspiration with evening classes, a weekend residential course and a visit to the CLAS exhibition at the British Library all coming up fairly soon.