Couple of name tags for my granddaughters.

This is about as ambitious as I get...when I look at this piece, my first thought is: gee, I like that little "B"...

Sometimes you have to practice your italic. Done with a Pilot parallel pen and Calli acrylic ink.

Done with Zig markers during a vacation in Arizona.

Here's a poem done with a cartridge pen...proves you don't need fancy equipment to get the job done. It combines two of my loves...aviation and calligraphy.

I was inspired by the writing of Michael Sull and worked a bit on some of those wonderful flourishes until I came up with this...it isn't exactly how he does the "I" but I added my own twist and that makes it special to me...now only 25 majuscules to go!

Here's my collection of Bill Lilly handmade pens. If you don't have one, you owe it to yourself to get one for pointed pen writing. One will last you a lifetime and can be made with most any kind of domestic or exotic wood. www.lillyscript.com

A blast from the past...from 1994 a practice sheet in gothicized italic. Barry Morentz is the master of this style. I think he puts a little slant on it which makes it really pretty.

I found this cool paper at a scrapbooking store...it's an alternating pattern of darks that are about 1/8th of an inch apart, perfect for playing with script. The white is Bleedproof White which is thinned down quite a bit and written with a Gillott 303.

Another left-over wedding envelope with a nice slick surface...lets the nib move like a marble on ice. The long flowing lines are encouraged by the ease of movement. I think I could work on these envelopes for a long time before I got tired of them.

More wordplay using Zig markers and colored pencil. The secret behind making a successful rolling type word like this is to make the first and last letters on the same plane. Otherwise it will appear to be headed up or downhill. Seems like there are a lot of secrets to calligraphy and part of the fun of learning is to find out all these secrets.

This is from a practice sheet, also done with brown gouache in a Spencerian style. When practicing Spencerian it is recommended to spread out your letters; also I like to write nice long words to get a nice flow and rhythm going. I normally listen to the radio and will write out words I hear. It would be nice sometime to have an envelope job where I could write like this, but I'm not sure it would translate well...sure is fun to write though.

Sometimes it all comes together...the media, the paper, the layout...
I've been using faux walnut ink with a bit of brown gouache for opacity and this envelope I really like. This is for a wedding and fortunately the envelopes are nice and big which gives you plenty of room to maneuver. In this case it is engrosser's script with slightly larger proportions for the caps on the first and third lines which gives a great contrast. The middle line actually has the proportions as recommended in the "bible" of engrosser's script, The Zanerian Manual.