Cleaning up mistakes

[Chessie]

There's a tiny part of me that is a little frightened to start a big calligraphy project because I have a propensity to dribble, drip, and splash ink from time to time and ruining my expensive paper/having to start over sounds rather unpleasant.  I'm using flexible Mitchell nibs without a reservoir and a bit of paper to protect the sheet has helped, but I feel like I'm missing something about corrections on projects.  Is it just a matter of drafting over and over until you get it right?  Is there a product to use to remove ground ink (soot based Chinese/Japanese ink)?

[Erica McPhee]

Such a good question! Mistakes are part of the process. This is an excellent thread on Fixing Mistakes.

Always let it dry fully before trying anything. Start with a gray kneadable eraser and see if that helps take some of it up. I use a very sharp blade to careful slice off the ink. It’s a teeny tiny movement and you have to be careful as you can damage the paper. But I can usually scrape up enough so it’s not noticeable or barely is.

In the “old days” they used to cut out paper to glue over the mistake. Or draw a little drawing to incorporate the mistake into the piece. It’s fun to see but wouldn’t fly for a final piece for me.

Also know that the mistakes lessen the more you practice and let go of the anxiety of creating a final piece. 

[Zivio]

I found Kestrel's free (requires email for mailing list) "mini lesson" at https://www.learncalligraphy.com/ extremely helpful! She demonstrates a step-by-step approach and describes the various tools that may work well.

Erica, hoping it is OK to put up this link ... let me know if there are any rules about this, and please edit or delete this post if I've mis-stepped.

~Karl

[Zivio]

I refer to the sometimes unavoidable blemishes and goofs as "humility spots," but then, I'm just handwriting and not producing presentation pieces. I've since learned a few tricks to mitigate the damage and help heal my pride.

[jeanwilson]

The drips and blobs usually diminish over time. Maintaining a very tidy work space helps a lot. It sets the tone for order and precision.

As you get to buying papers for finished projects - part of the process is finding papers that let the ink *sit on top* of the paper and instead of soaking in. Learning how to write with gouache is also a good idea because it is paint and does not soak in as much as ink so it is easier to scrape. I can't remember the names of the papers I used to use that had a very hard finish that was very easy to scrape. It might have been diploma parchment -- maybe someone else can give names of those hard surface papers that are easy to scrape.

My favorite paper is Arches Text Wove - and it is not easy to scrape.

If the mistake you make is writing the wrong letter - one option is to write the correct letter right over the top. Then keep going with your piece. After the ink has dried - you can go back and where the two letters overlap - you only have to remove the portions of the wrong letter that are showing. After you have scraped - if there is still a bit of shadow from the ink - and if you have gouache and Bleedproof White - and a tiny brush -- you can mix a color that matches the paper (exactly) and do some careful retouching. This takes a lot of practice, too - but it's time well spent.

It takes many years to be able to execute a piece of art without a single correction - so - it's a good idea to work on some correction skills as you are also working on the *mistake-free* skills. The single best prevention technique for mistakes is to pencil everything. It makes the spelling errors evaporate. I've never understood why people just dive in and hope they don't make a mistake when they could have chosen an insurance policy. By having the letters in pencil - you have freed up all your focus for making each stroke exactly how it should be.

The hot press surfaced papers are a very good starting point. And gouache. Black ink on white paper is IMHO rather severe. It's appropriate for certain kinds of work - but often times a colored paper and colored ink or gouache with less contrast makes for a more elegant piece -- and more forgiving corrections.

Even if you end up doing a piece twice - it's not a bad use of your time. I often did pieces 2 or 3 times - just because I looked at the first one and saw places to improve it. If you don't take the time to see if you can improve something - you rob yourself of some valuable lessons in *how-to-improve.* After 20 years - I was comfortable doing work where I could *do my best* on the first try.

[Erica McPhee]

I’ve moved the rest of this discussion here. It veered into a philosophical discussion versus answering the original question. Great discussion but should be its own post. 

[Chessie]

 Well, this has been extremely helpful!

I actually sat down and tried a thing yesterday so I thought I would toss this in as well alongside all the other instructions.  I've got some white Japanese Ink sticks and ground out a very thick white ink from one of them and basically used it as white-out.  It worked extremely well, layering over the black of my mistakes and being relatively easy to apply.  It dried flat and even and now it's hard to tell exactly where the mistakes were.  I don't know as it would work on any paper besides white (one might have to color mix to get the precise color of another paper), but it worked well on that. 

[InkyFingers]

Not sure if this belonged here… modern nibs tends to dig into the paper more so than vintage pens.

Perhaps this can avoid the mistakes often enough to worth the time to finding a good vintage nib.
In avoiding splats, moving the paper to the focal point of writing also helps and practice with the same nib so that you know the feel of it, even in your sleep.