Welcome to the Penmanship Forum

March 1, 2006

Please post your handwriting examples, questions, and/or comments as a New Topic. Thanks

Hello Everyone,

This is the forum for posting both questions and photos regarding handwriting and calligraphy. Much like James Pickering, retired moderator emeritus, my own everyday hand (with rare exception) is Chancery script--which is known as a calligraphic hand. But as most of you know, the dictionary describes calligraphy, simply, as beautiful handwriting. Today, calligraphy tends to denote the written hands of times past, and there are many. One thing that both our modern script and calligraphic scripts share in common is that in order to execute them well or improve your rendering of either, you have to slow down--and you have to really be committed to doing so. There is an advantage when working on improvement of the modern handwriting most of us grew up with--and that is that we know what the letters should look like! When undertaking a calligraphic hand, one must study the letterforms carefully and commit even more time to practice--but if you enjoy it, it's fun. Regardless of your writing "style" preference, legibility is what matters the most.

My co-moderator, Corien, renders a lovely Copperplate script--and I believe Elaine was working on this, too. From time to time there will likely be posts that include calligraphic scripts, but we hope to see lots of regular handwriting photos, too. We'll do our best to answer any questions that anyone may have.

Below is a scan of something I did back in 1981 from Rainer Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet.

Happy penning!

Ann Finley

http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/9681/rilkequotationlg3db.jpg

corienb Posted: Mar 31 2005, 08:45 AM

Good grief Ann, and you expect me to post a writing sample after this ?!I very much lack inspiration, and shamelessly copied Ann's poem ( hope you don't mind ) for my quick scribble.some real dip pen samples will follow and I might be able to put some Copperplate practice sheets online ( and then I will happily practise along ! ) should be fun to see improvements after a few weeks!

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/2709/corienscopperplateexample0fk.jpg

pen: Moore Safety ( with slightly unscrewed barrel end so I had a little trouble keeping the nib from retracting again while writing untill I figured out what was wrong ) flex nib and Parker Quink Blue. Comments in my normal hand with PR Midnight Blues in a Waterman Charleston with B nib.