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This text was written with my Waterman's 92 flex-nibbed fountain pen. I still find flex writing easier with a dipped nib in an oblique holder, but I feel that I'm gradually making progress and flex writing with a fountain pen is becoming easier with practice. The heading was with a Mitchell 303 nib in an oblique holder. The ink was Watermans black and the paper was Viking Imperial smooth white. The minuscule letters in the text are 3mm high.

Wow! That is beautiful and, frankly, amazing. Also, I love your subject matter choice.

Thank you,

John

Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing this with us.

Terrible. I've seen pre-schoolers with better writing.

...

What? I had to say something bad sometime, even if it's a filthy dirty lie!


As always Caliken... beautiful. I love your spacing and layout, always it is pleasing to the eye. A question though if I may! Are you angling the paper a great deal to achieve the slant or twisting your wrist or a combintation?

I turn the page 30 - 40 degrees anticlockwise and move it slightly to the right. I then hold my elbow to my side and turn my hand slightly to the right. The objective is to get the nib pointing, as close as possible, to the slope line to get an even flow of ink when the tines open under pressure.

With the inter-line spacing, there should be sufficient room between the lines so that the ascenders and descenders don't touch.

In general, inter-line spacing is often overlooked and it's actually quite iimportant to the overall appearance. This applies to both handwriting and calligraphy. The lines should be widely spaced for copperplate, closer together for italic and with uncial, the line-spacing can be much closer. Of course, none of this is mandatory - it just tends to look better.

I'm sorry if this is very basic information, Ged, but I don't know who'll be reading this!

caliken

No information is too basic for me!

Thanks for taking the time to explain how you maintain your slant and layout tips.

Wonderful! I'm always amazed that whatever style of letter you choose, it's always so legible. It's more than just "fancy" writing. I can't quite put it into better words at the moment, but wanted to take the time to at least post an appreciative reply...

Doug

Caliken, the script looks wonderful - actually it is perfect!

Yet I see this perfection of the script as an objection against it. For I find it indistinguishable from a computer processed text done in a well make Spencerian font. I know that is a rather unfair objection, but I cannot help thinking that the execution of the text misses a human dimension to it.

But unless I am completely wrong, that is the reason why you called it "an exercise" - an exercise in getting as close to perfection as possible - or?

Regards Zed

Many thanks as ever, Doug for your comments.

Thanks Zed, your points are all well made.

The differences between this and computerised work are immediately obvious to me - but then, I wrote it.

I am a perfectionist, which is a curse and a blessing, depending on your viewpoint. Yes - this was "an exercise in getting as close to perfection as possible" precisely that. Subconsciously, this is the way I always work, and as a result of my mindset, all of my work lacks a "human dimension". I hope that someday some personality will come through my handwriting, but I doubt it!

Some time ago, I did a series of drawings for a book of local, historical interest. They were 12" x 10" but were reduced in size considerably, for publication. As a result, they looked exactly like photographs, and I could have saved myself all that work!

However, having said all that, I enjoy my work immensely and can happily spend hours fiddling over some minute detail in a pencil drawing. We are what we are, and I'm quite happy to be criticized in what I prefer to take as a compliment (others might not!).

Incidentally, this was an attempt at Copperplate script, not Spencerian which is quite different but, as I said earlier, your point is well made.

Thanks for your interest

caliken

Caliken,

I did not mean to criticize your script. That is a job for someone who would, as you do yourself, see shortcomings in your scrip. I have to admit that I see none. I only wanted to give you my thoughts on your script that went through my head after I got over the amazement I experience when looking at such script...

And sorry about the mishap when calling your script Spencerian one. I guess that was a Freudian slip for I was wondering whether I get the same feeling of amazement when I see Spencerian script. I guess that happens less often because I mostly find it over-the-top and thus all too human...

Best wishes, Zed

Ps I wonder how an exercise in non-perfection would look like if executed by you...

Zed :
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was offended in some way, by your post - far from it!
I only mentioned the Spencerian script because there is a lot of confusion about that style of writing and Copperplate (formerly known as English Roundhand.)

Your observations were perceptive and thought-provoking.

best wishes

caliken

I think this looks wonderfully human!

Yes, at first glance it looks far too perfect to be humanly possible, but if you really (REALLY) look, you can see the exquisitely human variance from one letter to another, as well as a very interesting (nearly imperceptible) baseline variation (ex: letter groups such as the 'rv' in "harvest" in the first line, or the tiny, tiny bit that the second line goes uphill).

These are in no way critiques!!!

Computer-generated text looks TOO perfect, and as a result, lacks warmth: the baseline is boringly perfect, each character is fully identical (ignoring contextual differences such as letters following 'o', 'v', or 'w'; initial letters vs joined; etc.).

I see this as an example of the kind of thing that people used to more commonly strive for. Sure, there were only handful of scribes, but far, far more than there are today. People don't try to achieve things like this because they don't believe that they're possible. Plus, why should they: that what computers are for, right?

I firmly believe, though, that in order to be able to do anything simulating something that used to be done by hand at a high level with a computer, you need to learn how to do it by hand. No, not many digital typographers are going to put in the time to be able to write like this, but the line spacing issues mentioned earlier are EXTREMELY important for typographers to know.

(Sorry: this is getting more soapboxy than I intended, but just as writing has become a lost art, so has good typography. There are many nuances when working with movable type and letterpress that get dropped by digital equivalents, and as a result even major publishers are producing lower-quality typography than they should be, and very few people notice or care.)