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Calligraphy is an ancient visual art form related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a brush, pen or other writing instrument, which creates writing and lettering that is expressive and decorative.

Chances are, you or someone you know has tried calligraphy. For me it goes back to my grandfather, who used a fountain pen for his beautiful correspondence. It was a joy to get a letter from him!

The revival of this historical art form is real. And yet, today is different from the past because fewer take classes to become professionals, as I once did. More likely a retired person revisits earlier creative interests and says to me, “I’ve always wanted to learn this and now I have the time.” They take a class for encouragement and direction, and often discover that practicing lettering is an enjoyable, meditative experience. They use their new skills for cards, journals, inspiring quotes.

When I teach calligraphy I include information about its history. For example, the early alphabet was just 23 let-ters; J, U and W came later. So if you’ve ever questioned that an official stone inscription might be misspelled as in, say, ‘MVNICIPAL COVRT,’ rest assured that its historical reference is correct.

It’s interesting that we are born with the desire to create and to communicate. From petroglyphs and pic-tograms, we’ve come a long way using twigs, brushes, chisels, quills, nibs, crayons, pencils, ballpoint pens, and markers. Everything has potential now. Recently I peeled off a layer of birch bark and used it as parchment, of sorts.

And when artists gather at conferences, it’s fun to see what letters or designs we can make with stones, pods, string, and shells. If accidental texture appears, it’s a success! In this new freedom of expression, we tap into creativity at an inner level. One of my instructors challenged me to let go of graph paper, my commercial design security blanket, saying, “Let art have its way.”

Let’s take a look at the major groups of tools in the evolution of calligraphy:

Chisel Pen: Early scribes (those who made illumi-nated manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells) were both men and women. Some did not read, but recorded drawn letters in gouache on parchment (animal skins), using

By Phawnda Moore

Calligraphy

an

Evolving art Form

16 Mendocino Arts Magazine

gold and ground minerals for colors. These amazing art-ists worked in primitive conditions to carefully preserve sacred documents.

In the 1980s, I lettered one of my favorite quotes (previous page) that defines the journey. It’s in Bookhand, a Roman variation, written with a chisel nib pen. Left is a recent pointed (gothicized) Italic style. With chisel tools, thick and thin strokes are achieved by varying the pen angle.

BRUsh Pen: It may seem that brush is a modern inven-tion because of popular marker pens, but we’ve only had those since the early 1960s. Long before, around 3,000 BC, the Egyptians used twigs as brushes, followed by the Greeks and Romans, who drew classic forms with brush on marble before incising the letters.

Eastern cultures have embraced the brush for artis-tic expression since 250 BC, fusing poetry, literature and painting in one form. The Chinese make their own brushes, sometimes taking the first hair from a baby’s head (said to bring good luck), and selecting marble and finer materials for the brush handle. Today, an estimated 20 million Japanese practice the art of calligraphy.

Going west, in the United States the brush was used from the 1920s for advertising and sign painting. A small group of professionals still exist today.

Pointed brushes and brush markers are versatile, friendly companions. They can be used with a variety of media to draw images and letters.

POinted Pen: Script hands, Copperplate, English Roundhand, and Spencerian, have always been used for correspondence. Modern scribes use pointed tools for historical styles and drawn images, as well. Pointed tools (including pencils and brushes) use pressure to achieve

thick and thin strokes.The pointed pen is often associated with

wedding invitations. The images to the left show the tool, media, and a design for my 2015 holiday card, where I transformed an everyday snow girl into a snow angel with this pen.

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GRaPhite: Today graphite can be both classic and modern, as shown at the right. On the far right, an acan-thus leaf border frames pencil drawn, Roman-influenced letters. Immediately right, a journal page displays, well, a little exasperation! It’s interesting to see the influence of history in many contemporary projects.

B-niB: Another popular tool is a B-nib, which works well with other hands and media. My favorite tech-nique with this one is to use a rain-bow effect with colored inks. “Be Sweet and Stand Tall” is one such example (bottom right).

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As you might expect, exploring different media and tech-niques is part of the fun in calligraphy. So what happens to all the “not so perfect” efforts? Well, they can become a project on their own! Here is an accordion book I created with strips from my heap. The lower image includes the six words I use in teaching: observe, ponder, integrate, evaluate, surrender and share.

Phawnda Moore will be offering a weekend workshop, Pointed Pen Illustration, at the Mendocino Art Center, September 15–16, 2018. More information and online reg-ister at MendocinoartCenter.org/Fall18/Moore.html.

More examples of Phawnda’s work can be seen on her website, journalismdesign.net.