The Storyteller: Modern Calligraphy

Here are the motivational hand lettered pieces that I mentioned about in my last post.

I have been practicing and honing my lettering skills for over 2 years now with the sole intention of being able to letter some quotes for my gallery wall at home. I love cursive writing and the era I grew up in, that was the only way to write..I know I sound old, but its a fact!

Cursive writing and fountain pen was the only way we could write and if we forgot our pen/inks, then no writing in class! Ball point pen was just not allowed . I remember my teacher stressing on posture and angles, Even today that cursive writing notebook brings back fond memories, it was my favorite class and it was always after the dreaded math class, so I would get through the math dreaming of beautiful lettered words and a sharp elegant nib just about touching the lines and all the oh! so lovely flourishes! and before I knew it, math class would be over with not a number having entered my brain! But it would be time to write and that's all that mattered!lol!

So with good handwriting already mastered, I thought calligraphy would be a breeze and I am not talking about Spencerian or copperplate script, no way ..that's a skill that has to have years of learning and practice, I would have been happy if I could simply get the thick and thin lines and that beautiful bounce with modern calligraphy. My first attempt was a huge reality check! It was way more complicated than I had thought. This was an old fashioned dip pen that I was learning with and not a fountain pen which has continuous ink flow, so just as I was about to finish a word, the ink would run out and so would I ...of patience! Sometimes, it would not start at all or it would dump a huge blob of ink at the first touch to paper! Oh well!

Disappointed but not demoralized, I decided to take up the challenge and read and watched and read some more and watched even more until it dawned on me that perhaps it was the nib which was at fault not my writing and remember I had tried quite a few nibs by then. So after 2 years of struggling to get it right, I got myself a totally different nib! And as luck would have it, it worked!

So if you are reading this and are in the same place as I was, try the Hunt 101, it works !

So once that hurdle was out of the way, I got to do what I have always wanted to do..hand letter quotes! Talking about quotes, I have this huge journal filled with my favorites, and they are all just regular words spoken by me or my family which have been thought provoking to me. So I wrote some and wondered if this could inspire someone or motivate them in anyway, so I got them ready to print and are now available in my Etsy shop.

For now I have them all on one wall and when I look at them I am glad that I persevered. It feels good to be surrounded by positivity but words can be really powerful and its always wise to use it with care and caution!