A Complete Calligraphy Kit for Beginners
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Product Summary
Brand: NicoleKitchen and Housewares Reviews of A Complete Calligraphy Kit for Beginners
Customer Review: Not a calligraphy kit in any real sense
Summary: 1 Stars
Any pen or pencil will do for the basic practice of calligraphy (which means "beautiful writing"). The beauty part comes from the scribe's own regularity, grace, and good eye, not from the writing implement. The other absolute necessity is p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e. Becoming a good scribe won't happen overnight. It's like learning any other art form, such as how to play a musical instrument: practice, practice, practice.
Once you've taught yourself how to form letters regularly and can letter out a neat-looking line of text with any pencil you pick up, then you can think about using a special-purpose writing tool.
The kind of tool you pick depends on the kind of result you want. Most of what we in Europe and the Americas think of as "calligraphy" requires a chisel-shaped pen. Held steady in the hand, it automatically makes lines that vary from thick to thin as your hand moves to write the letters.
If that's the kind of calligraphy you want to do, this set will NOT help you do it and there's no use buying it.
There are a number of companies that make chisel-point steel pen nibs. Speedball's C-series is probably the best-known in the US. You can get them at any art-supply shop and quite a few stationery shops. Other useful brands are Mitchell's, from England, and Brause, from Germany. All have their special good and bad points and unique sizes, so get a few of each - they're fairly cheap and very durable. Also get a bottle of NON-waterproof CARBON ink (Higgins Eternal is good), plus a good pattern book. Edward Johnston's "Writing, Illuminating, and Lettering" is the standard work as far as most scribes are concerned, but Speedball puts out a little handbook that's very nice too, also cheaper. Add paper, and you're ready to scribble.
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