Oct 12, 2009 Carolingian at Beverly Hills

October 12, 2009 by Judy Shibata

Beverly Hills Adult School Class #4: We continued working with the 2 1/2 mm Brause nib. DeAnn had 2 color copy handouts, the Carolingian exemplar and the “quick brown fox…” alphabet sentence, both written with the 5mm Brause nib. She also brought illuminated manuscript samples and photo albums with more samples.

For warm-up, we wrote sentences with the 2 1/2 mm Brause nib, paying close attention to the homework DeAnn corrected and returned to us.

The class made name tags on red paper. DeAnn showed us to bend the paper lightly to figure out in which direction the grain ran. The direction with less resistance when you try to fold it is the direction of the grain & the direction that you should fold the paper for a cleaner fold.

DeAnn demo’d Zig calligraphy markers, Pilot parallel pens, and using watercolors with a brush to feed the nib. DeAnn doesn’t recommend learning or practicing calligraphy with markers or fountain pens because the student will not be able to use the nib successfully and become too used to the ease of markers/fountain pens. Learning calligraphy with the chisel-tip nib will enable one to use any type of medium and have the most flexibility. Once you learn how to write with the chisel-tip nib, you’ll be able to use any type of pen.

DeAnn likes using the Pilot parallel pens for Society for Calligraphy events and demos. Because the 6mm size uses up the ink in the cartridge very quickly, DeAnn dips the pen in ink (she likes Pelikan 4001). You can refill an empty cartridge with watercolor and gouache. Just don’t use waterproof inks. The nib section can be removed & cleaned if it clogs up.

There was a demonstration where we "pounced" the paper to help with the "bleeding" of the ink. It did help a little bit. Just lightly dust the paper with Pounce and rub it in with the felt ring then either blow excess off or wipe it off with your hand.

HOMEWORK: Continue practicing with the 2 1/2 mm Brause nib. Remember: 3-2-3 boxes for the lining. Look for text that you want to use for the illuminated manuscript project. If you’ve already chosen some text, practice that.

Intermediates: try putting the slant in (see the handout for exact angle).

Next week we’ll put the slant into the Carolingian.