Messages

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Beginner ink troubles

« on: May 06, 2019, 01:42:06 PM »

While I, too, dilute my sumi ink (I like 2 parts sumi to 1 part water), it should work straight out of the bottle.  I still suspect your nib might be the culprit.

I thought that might be the case too. But the Loppetz did mention that he/she had no trouble with writing in the beginning. But maybe he/she changed the nib or the ink and forgot to prep it? Can't say anything else without more info on this.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Beginner ink troubles

« on: April 24, 2019, 01:20:57 PM »

I have not tried adding any water to my ink. I'd be scared to add too much and ruin it. How much should i add?

If that's the case then don't any water AT ALL. I would recommend mixing in some gum arabic instead, since it makes the ink more condensed and non-watery. I'm not the expert on this, if you need any help, please refer to the link I gave in the previous reply, it's has a lot more information on there on how to dilute ink.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Beginner ink troubles

« on: April 14, 2019, 06:10:04 PM »

I had the exact problem when I started out!! It sounds like your ink is too watery.
I was using an off-brand Japanese ink, so changing ink to sumi worked for me. However, you are using a pretty reliable ink so there might be other reasons.
1. Mixing ink with water. Have you mixed your ink with water?
2. Prepping the nib. You need to take off the oil layer from new nibs. Washing them with toothpaste is a good method.

There's an awesome blog post on common ink problems: https://thepostmansknock.com/common-calligraphy-ink-problems-solutions/
Reading this when I first started helped so much!!

Hope this is helpful to you

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Digital Design / Re: Natascha’s Technique for Digitizing Calligraphy!

« on: February 19, 2019, 09:10:17 AM »

Thanks for sharing Erica! This will definitely come in handy in the future

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Chic Obliques

« on: February 09, 2019, 05:39:44 PM »

Hi Dave, I think we need to measure your hands just to see exactly what size will fit. If you contact my via my email which is ' [email protected] ' I'll send you some info to get the perfect measurements!  Edward

It's a nice sentiment but I don't think calligraphy is the right hobby for me.  Thinking of disposing of the holders I have, some have gone already.

It will be sad if you do decide to leave! However, I do understand hobbies can come and go as time progresses, I myself have given up a couple hobbies because I thought they weren't for me. Hope you find whatever you are looking for in the end! Good luck 

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Collecting pen holders

« on: February 05, 2019, 03:22:05 PM »

I do pick up vintage advertising holders periodically, especially if it's interesting, like I found one from a bank at which I used to work while in college, and one for the former Governor of New York who became vice president under Ford.

Wow, those holders are really interesting! Thanks for sharing

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Word of the Day / Re: Kung Hei Fat Choi

« on: February 05, 2019, 11:55:18 AM »

That's pretty impressive! I gave up trying to write Chinese with dip pen since some of the strokes are really hard to achieve.

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Introductions / Re: Prodigal Daughter!

« on: January 30, 2019, 03:28:13 PM »

Disillusioned, I practised less, and isolated myself from the calligraphy community because I didn’t feel like I had anything of value to offer.

This is probably a lot of us Nikki. It's hard, especially for someone like me who has never had a good hand or practiced fine motor skills. And I really have nothing to give back. I didn't bother to register for a long time because of that.

But people are relentlessly positive and usually very helpful. Regardless of my skill level. So here I am, every once in a while practicing to make progress, and really amazed at the quality of work some folks can produce. From what you write, I think you understand.

So, I'm new, never knew you before,  but I'll say "hi" anyway.

I have to agree! I would have been far less active if the people around here weren't as friendly.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Re: Why did you start calligraphy?

« on: January 27, 2019, 05:00:52 PM »

Great question!  I got started in 2005 when my good friend needed invitations calligraphed for a corporate event.  Knowing that I was artistically inclined, she asked if I knew how to do calligraphy.  I told her no, but I'd try to figure it out, and so I taught myself italics.  I wish I had a photo of one of the envelopes - I'm sure it'd be quite humbling to see it now.  Yikes.  Anyhow, I really enjoyed it, so I continued to learn and eventually began to offer my services professionally as a side gig outside of my finance job.  It was tough for me to find help back then and I never did find classes in my area - Instagram wasn't around, nor smart phones even, and I had no idea who to go to, so my progress was slow and I had a lot of bad habits.  But, I really wanted to keep at it, so I did, and by the end of 2006 I was out of finance and fully into the world of stationery design and calligraphy. Still here!

Looking forward to reading others' stories!

Wow! That's really inspirational and motivating! 13 years of hardwork is impressive, especially when you don't have as much resources.

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Open Flourish | General Discussion / Why did you start calligraphy?

« on: January 27, 2019, 01:57:12 PM »

Hi guys, I thought this thread might be fun! I would love to know how everyone started even though I'm still a newbie myself.

To begin with, I will talk about myself for a little bit. I started calligraphy because, even though English is not my first language, the elegance in the variation of lines is so attractive to me. The first time I saw a calligraphy art was on social media, and it was simply fascinating! So I bought a bunch of nibs and began my journey 

What about you all? Feel free to share your story in the comments

Edit: Thank you all for every single comment!!! It's being really fun reading everyone's stories. But more is always welcome! Please do add your story to our list if you feel like to!

Best Wishes.

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Technical Support & Feedback / Re: Is there a way to "bookmark" or "save" a post?

« on: January 23, 2019, 09:39:42 PM »

Clever!  I had considered bookmarking in my browser, but Google Keep seems better because you can access it from any computer by signing in.  I recently lost all of my bookmarks, ugh!

Glad that helped! Google is pretty reliable when it comes to syncing stuff with the account haha. I find labeling super helpful because now I can categorize posts based on the scripts and purposes!

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Copperplate, Engrosser's Script, Roundhand Calligraphy / Best works to trace on?

« on: January 23, 2019, 01:30:52 PM »

Hi all, I've been practicing on copperplate for a couple months and some posts in this forum suggested tracing as a practice method. I thought this idea was very practical on building some muscle memory. However, I wasn't able to find a lot of best-suited works for my purpose after some research. Most copperplate works online are exemplars, but it would be really nice if I can find complete writings so I can print and trace to practice with the spacing, breaks, shading width etc. I did find an awesome sample from IAMPETH (attached), but I would really appreciate more!

A big thank you in advance!

p.s. hope I'm not posting too much!

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Technical Support & Feedback / Re: Is there a way to "bookmark" or "save" a post?

« on: January 23, 2019, 12:50:10 PM »

Just an update, I found a tool called Google Keep that is also very handy for the bookmarking purpose. I used a chrome extension so whenever I see a post I want to save, I simply click on the icon and it will be saved in my "notebook". You can also categorize the posts and make additional notes on each post. Link to Google Keep: https://keep.google.com/

Hope this helps!

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Technical Support & Feedback / Re: Is there a way to "bookmark" or "save" a post?

« on: January 23, 2019, 11:00:11 AM »

That's pretty smart! The only thing I'm worried about is being treated like spams

I found many amazing posts in this forum that I would like to "keep" it in some way with my account. So I can access all the posts I "saved" by going to a certain page.
I'm really new here so I'm not familiar with all the functions of this forum. Would be glad to know if such a function exists or not!
Thanks for any help in advance

@Wonderer
Well, here's a "hack" if you will, that will enable you to recall all the posts you wish right here on the forum.
Pick a group of letters (and numbers if you like) that will not be likely to ever be in a post, say like rtp4me, and use that alphanumeric in a reply to the post you wish to recall later. Use the search box (upper left) and type in rtp4me, and it will bring up all the posts you have used this alphanumeric in, essentially tagging them all (your search will show all these posts, andnecessariy the posts to which you replied (and wanted to save).

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Technical Support & Feedback / Re: Is there a way to "bookmark" or "save" a post?

« on: January 22, 2019, 08:55:25 PM »

I think Bianca has a good idea. There is a mod for the forum which allows bookmarking but it conflicted with one of our other mods (can’t remember which one now). However, with that said, I will do a little research and see if anyone has written any new code in the past couple years to address it. 

Thank you Erica for checking this out! I think Bianca's method should be very suitable for my purpose. But if you do find anything else, please let know!