Peachy Keen, Jelly Bean asked:


I already know how to do certain types of calligraphy, but I’d like to learn more about the art and other ways of writing.

Any suggestions?

Brent

Sarrah Beaumont asked:


You have probably heard of the latest craze in wedding invitations. Gone are the days when each and every bride in the country rushes to have her invitation printed with a laser-printer ink etched on glossy paper. We now welcome the era of handwritten wedding invitations.

There are actually two options up for brides and grooms-to-be. One, if you believe that your handwriting is passably artistic, you can always write the wedding invitations yourself. This exceptionally personalized means is definitely more affective if you wish to invoke a more intimate, cozy feel for your special day.

Moreover, writing your own wedding invitations slashes down a fraction of your expenses. Just buy your own scented stationery, a box of lovely, well-designed envelopes and voila, a lovely invitation without the hefty price. You can even add in a few embellishments and ornate designs here and there to complete the personalized feel to a tee.

This savings could really work well for you. You can then splurge on the wedding dress or your dreams, or on the bridesmaids dresses.

If you still wish to evoke that same intimate atmosphere, yet your handwriting is needs to be deciphered by a specialist, we suggest that you go get yourself a professional calligrapher.

The art of calligraphy’s roots could be traced back to cave paintings. Over the years, it grew to become a famous, treasured art despite the advance of other printing materials such as typewriters, and of course, computers. Despite the myriad of font styles, colour and sizes that a computer can produce, calligraphy is still sought-after. As long as there is a human being who keeps it alive, calligraphy will continue to be an art.

This art is brought to a whole new light when used in wedding invitations. Calligraphy set in glossy, embossed or silky paper gives the guests an impression of comfort and intimacy. Nothing says “you are special” quite like handwritten invitations. It basically shows that much thought and effort was put into each and every line.

A wedding invitation, much like a wedding dress, is the finest representation of the bride’s personality. A gracious invitation reflects a gracious host.

To avoid humdrum handwritten wedding invitations, you can always opt to indulge and experiment in the following areas:

1. Shape. You can always create unique shapes for your wedding invitations. You can either have it shaped like your wedding dress, your wedding cake or have it shaped like a bell. You can always play around with shapes, it is probably the safest element to experiment with.

2. Size. If you really want to make an impression, lay it on the invitation size. The bigger, the crazier. However, your guests would probably be eternally grateful if you will not send them a billboard-size invitation.

3. Design. Make sure that your wedding invitation design matches your theme. Do not depict a beach theme on your wedding invitation when you are actually going to have a church wedding.

4. Colour. Since it is a wedding, go for neutral colors, earth tones or pastels. Avoid black at all cost.



Francis

David Gass asked:


Calligraphy is beautiful writing. It is a delightful art. In some religions, the name of God is written in various forms of calligraphy as a means to convey prayers. Calligraphy can be a fun hobby, a creative art, and even a great home based business. All you will need is a pen and paper and some space to start with. Writing is the basic prerequisite for the calligraphic artist.

You need not be an artist or a painter either. Attention to detail and some patience is all you need. An excellent piece of calligraphy inspires us to strive for excellence and touches the depths of spirituality within us. One can see the picture of the Divine in the artistic lines.

Your own Calligraphy Business

Calligraphy is an acquired art. A person with basic artistic ability can learn this special art. Many stores get orders for specialized hand letter printing which only a calligrapher can perform. Wedding announcements, address writing on cards, menus, invitations, personalized greeting cards, and certificates need to be hand written. If the order is small, commercial printing is expensive. People often prefer calligraphic type to make the card attractive.

Even if a photocopier is used to make duplicate copies, the original will still need the calligraphy. A good calligrapher can work as an in-house calligrapher with printers or a stationary store. You can also do freelance for many such organizations.

Learning Calligraphy

There are many self-help books and kits available at inexpensive prices from bookstores to teach and learn calligraphy.

A calligraphy teacher will help you in learning to use broad tipped pens to make wide vertical strokes and narrow horizontal lines. Turning the pen results in various effects, like wider, rounder or pin pointed shapes.

You can learn to master one alphabet at a time for ornate embellishment and variations in writing them. The simple alphabets transform magically into amazing artistic shapes. The words thus formed come to a strange life of their own. This is the power of the practiced and perfected art of calligraphy.

How to Start

Learn calligraphy through a kit or under a tutor. Practice until you attain perfection. Personally, call on stationery shops or printers to tell them of your talent. Leave your self-designed cards, with an idea of cost and samples of your best work. For card printing, first print your design and logo and then get it reduced to business card size, two by three and a half inches. This will give a sharp and clear look to your business card. Get multiples made with the help of an inexpensive photo offset process and finally get them embossed for expensive looks.

Make samples of cards, menus, and certificates with calligraphy and give them as samples to potential customers. This leads to impulsive purchases.

Calligraphy can be a hobby or a lucrative business venture with practically no overheads.



Phyllis

its her x3 asked:


i need to know about famous calligraphers, particulary if they don’t do chinese calligraphy. i can’t find any information anywhere. please help!

Paul

socialbutterflyinacocoon asked:


I just need the alphabet in Gothic Calligraphy style so that I can practice copying the letters.

Amy

Jimmy Cox asked:


Before the beginning of the 20th Century little had been written about calligraphy except The Story of the Alphabet by Edward Clodd and Maude Thompson’s fine work on Greek ana Latin Paleography together with his volume on English Illuminated Manuscripts, published in 1895 and out of print before 1906. But since the time that Edward Johnston published his book on Writing, Lettering and Illuminating a steady stream of works upon all aspects of the subject have been written; probably it was because of the interest aroused by the pioneers in the practical side of the craft that this flow of literature occurred, both here and in the United States.

The following are among the most important. The British Museum published a guide to the collection of manuscripts they had in 1906. About the same time John W. Bradley was publishing illustrated books on illuminating, its history and development. During 1907 the British Museum published Reproductions of Illuminated MSS., a series of fifty collotype plates. In 1920 W. A. Mason published in New York a work of considerable scholarship dealing with the subject of picture writing in the Americas together with the growth of letter-form in Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, Assyria, Crete, Greece and Rome, a book of great interest to all who wish to study the formation of alphabets.

With the development of photography and process reproduction the range of examples showing epigraphy and paleography has increased to a degree unthought of during the early days of the century. During 1932 B. L. Ullnan of the University of Chicago published Ancient Writing and Its Influence, which brings the history of the alphabet more up to date and includes some observations on the Sinai stones, which may eventually help to solve the riddle of the alphabet. Professor E. A. Lowe of Oxford wrote in The Legacy of the Middle Ages a chapter on “Handwriting” which deals with its growth before the time of Charlemagne. This is an excellent essay, which should be known by all serious students of calligraphy. James Wardrop of the Victoria and Albert Museum has also written on “Palatino and His Circle” in Signature, No. 14, 1952.

World origins and development of alphabets are also dealt with in great profusion by D. Diringer, a scholar in these matters. The French just before the war of 1939-1945 issued some newly discovered material in plates dealing with early specimens of the written small letter under the title of L’ Eicriture Latine by J. Mallon, which takes history back earlier than Maude Thompson’s great work.

Finally among the smaller and more recent publications comes the “King Penguin” on the subject of writing by Alfred Fairbank, which makes a rapid survey from the fourth to the twentieth centuries; and some beautiful photographic reproductions of the detailed work of twelfth-century artists taken from the Winchester Bible by Walter Oakshott.

From about the year 1930 writing and lettering had made such progress that it had become a subject in the training of Art Teachers and was taught by the immediate followers of the two who had given their lives to its cause. Lettering of Today, first volume, published in 1937, showed the work of some of these who had taken up the craft and were in their turn passing it on to the new generation.

As the art itself has progressed, so has the literature representing calligraphy. The aforementioned books are great historical references, but technical books that will walk you through the art of calligraphy are also available.



Leroy

alishaweiss21 asked:


‘m looking for the Lucida Calligraphy font that I can download for free that will work with Microsoft Word. I just got a new laptop with Office 2007 and it doesn’t have that font. Thanks!

Luis

KEMC asked:


I bougth this calligraphy pen, do you know where i can learn how to use the pen, write nice and neat, free lessons possible online?
u guys rnt helping, ill just google it

Stacey

Daniel Jowssey asked:


The Japanese tea ceremony is a multifaceted traditional activity based on Taoism (Daoism) and influenced by Zen Buddhism, in which powdered green tea, or matcha , is ceremonially prepared and served to others.

The get-togethers for chanoyu are called chakai (literally “”tea meeting”") or chaji (literally “”tea function”"). Usually the term chakai is used to refer to a relatively simple course of hospitality that includes the service of confections, usucha (thin tea), and perhaps tenshin (a light snack), while the term chaji refers to a more formal course of hospitality including kaiseki (a special kind of full-course meal), confections, koicha (thick tea), and usucha (thin tea). A chaji may last up to four hours.

A tea practitioner should strive to be knowledgable if not expert in the wide range of disciplines and traditional arts that are integral to chanoyu — for example, the production and types of tea, kimono, calligraphy, flower arranging, ceramics, and incense — in addition to his or her school’s tea practices. Because of this, the study of the tea ceremony is virtually endless.Even to participate as a guest in a formal tea ceremony requires knowledge of the prescribed gestures and phrases, the proper way to take tea and sweets, and general deportment in the tea room.

The Japanese tea ceremony is a traditional ritual based on Taoism (Daoism) and influenced by Zen Buddhism in which powdered green tea, or matcha , is ceremonially prepared by a skilled practitioner and served to a small group of guests in a tranquil setting. Chaji is a full tea presentation with a meal. As in virtually every tea ceremony, the host may spend days going over minutiae to insure that this ceremony will be perfect. Through tea, recognition is given that every human encounter is a singular occasion which can, and will, never recur again exactly. Thus every aspect of tea must be savored for what it gives the participants.

Chanoyu which means “hot water for tea” refers to a single ceremony that involves only tea, while the longer version known as Chaji “tea meeting” entails a full tea ceremony in which a light meal is also served, and can last up to four hours. Mastering the art of the tea ceremony includes years of study that can last a lifetime, as the student must be familiar with several interrelated disciplines such as flower arranging, calligraphy, ceramics, incense, and the proper technique for wearing kimono. Guests who participate in the ritual must also be aware of the proper conduct in regard to utilizing certain phrases and gestures required to maintain the integrity of the ceremony.

If tea is to be served in a tea house guests will initially be shown to a waiting room called a machiai, which is usually a separate structure such as a simple gazebo. After being summoned by the host they purify themselves by rinsing their mouths and hands with water from a small stone basin known as tsukubai, and then continue through the garden to the tea house. Removing their shoes they proceed through a small sliding door that is only thirty six inches high, thus symbolizing that all who enter are equal in stature irrespective of status or social position. The roomis not decorated save for a scroll painting called kakemono, which has been selected by the host and reveals the theme of the ceremony. The Buddhist scripture on the scroll is called bokuseki (ink traces) and is admired by each guest in turn before being seated seiza style on the tatami mat floor.

If a meal is not served the host will present each guest with small sweets eaten from special paper known as kaishi, which each person carries in a decorative wallet tucked in the ****** of the kimono. All utensils to be used in the ceremony such as tea bowl, tea scoop, and whisk, are ritualistically cleansed in the presence of the guests in a precise manner and order before being fastidiously arranged according to the ceremony being performed. Upon completion of cleaning and preparing the utensils, the host will place a carefully measured proportion of green tea powder in a bowl along with the appropriate amount of hot water, and then whisk the tea using a precise set of movements. Guests relax and enjoy the atmosphere of the simple surroundings and conversation is kept to a minimum. The host then serves the bowl to the guest of honor, bows are exchanged, and the bowl is raised to the host in a gesture of respect. The bowl in then rotated by the guest to avoid drinking from it’s front, a sip is taken followed by a prescribed phrase, the bowl’s rim is wiped and rotated back to its original position, and is then passed on to the next guest with a bow. The protocol is repeated until all guests have tasted the tea from the same bowl, and it is then returned to the host who rinses it. The scoop and tea container are then offered to the guests for examination, each item being treated with extreme care and reverence as they may be irreplaceable handmade antiques passed down for generations.

At the conclusion, the guests express their appreciation for the tea and admiration for the art of the host. They leave as the host watches from the door of the teahouse.



Henry