Calligraphy

Recently, I took on a job doing calligraphy for wedding invitations - just the addressing of the outside envelopes and the inside envelopes.

I jumped at the opportunity since it is rare that I get to use my calligraphy pens. I learned to write in italic when I was in junior high and high school. And as an illustrator, I think I neglect the wonderful possibilities a calligraphy pen has to offer - the lyrical thick and thin scrollwork and filigrees. But I decided to keep this job fairly simple as I had to address 130 invitations (which translated to 260 envelopes total). For each envelope, I measured guide lines to use. I set my "x-height," ascender and descender with these guides.



I may feel confident to do this with only a baseline one day, but not today. Without going into specifics on what each term means, I had basically set the guides to show me how tall my capital and my lowercase letters could be. Next, I began the process of inking.

I spent many hours inking. I had to take frequent breaks as my eyes would tire and when that happened, mistakes would too. Then the last step was to erase all the guide lines.

Real simple. As I am not a full-time calligrapher, I think I will leave that work to the pros. And for more info on the technique itself, just give Google a visit. There is a world of information on the techniques and the many styles of calligraphy.