“I have never done calligraphy before”
After a week of intense critical thinking exercises, the next step in the typeface design process was to start doing calligraphy, and not the popular Latin calligraphy but Gujarati calligraphy! And my first reaction to that was - “I have never done calligraphy before!”
I have never attempted or learned any kind of calligraphy, even though I really wanted to after my first live introduction to it at Type Camp Mumbai in 2016. Kriti Monga was demonstrating different writing tools used to do calligraphy and hand lettering and that’s when my keen interest to try calligraphy was born. However, I guess I didn’t try it properly because I didn’t have enough clarity or courage to know where to start.
When my mentor, Shuchita, was briefing me about what I can start with, she asked me if I have the calligraphy tools to do Indic calligraphy. I was not quite sure what she meant by that because all I thought was I have some calligraphy pens that I haven’t everrr used, but what I didn’t realise was that there were different calligraphy pens used for Latin calligraphy and Devanagari or Indic script calligraphy.
I did learn from my experience at Type Camp and the Type and Typography module in college that Latin and Devanagari calligraphy styles use different nib angles for calligraphy. But it never struck me that all the calligraphy pens I possessed were all only for Latin script calligraphy.
What an eye opener!
All things of (LATIN) calligraphy that I owned before I ordered the bamboo reed pens.
I collected all the calligraphy tools that I had and yes, I was right! All of them were for Latin calligraphy and none for Indic. I updated my mentor about the same and quickly surfed on amazon to find the right pens needed for Gujarati/Indic calligraphy. My mentor told me about these versatile bamboo reed pens (more info in the next section) that I did find online with a delivery window of 4-5 days. I placed an order right away!
Until the delivery of my new tools, all I could do was finally open and try getting aquatinted with calligraphy tools that I already had - and so I did!
I sent these pictures to my mentor and wrote the following -
“I watched a few videos on how dip pens work and how to prepare them for writing. Here’s how it turned out.
I was confused as to why the ink was leaking and tried to use paper of different thickness to figure out if it was a paper issue or an ink issue. I think it was both.
The paper I started out with were the copier sheets (around 75-100 gsm thickness) and so the ink really was spreading quick. I tried to then write on a 130 gsm cartridge drawing paper (small spiral bound book) to check if the ink was blotting or not on the paper, but it was, almost the same as it was on the copier sheets. I even tried on the Montmatre calligraphy workbook paper which has a different kind of texture, it was better on that one but not the best.
Then, I thought it has to be the ink too. Turns out, the big bottle of ink that I was using is a fountain pen ink and the other small bottle is I think meant for calligraphy specifically because it came in a calligraphy pen set. I could see the thickness of both the inks being different - the fountain pen one was thinner than the calligraphy ink. (But I don’t have enough of that to do a lot of practice with.)
I tried looking for specific calligraphy inks on amazon to buy, but there a lot of different options of ink types - calligraphy ink (super expensive), drawing ink (moderately expensive) and other uncategorised ink bottles (some super cheap).”
To which she replied,
“Hey, for using bamboo reed, normal ink would work. Use Chinese ink or Indian ink. It is easy to find and its pretty cheap.
There is no trick to calligraphy, all you need to work on is repetition and patience. Again, I want to emphasis that the point of this is not make a amazing calligrapher out of you (you can keep practicing calligraphy if you like on the side). The main objective at the moment is to understand the letters and their movement. ”
Special tools for Indic Script Calligraphy
The pre-carved tools (especially the metal nibs) designed for Latin script calligraphy do not work for the Indic scripts calligraphy because the angle of nib while writing is totally different and opposite of each other. For Latin calligraphy the pen nib is angled at 30-45º towards the left, whereas for most Indic scripts like Devanagari and Gujarati, the nib is angled at 30-45º towards the right.
( More detailed description about nib angles with visual references and which angle works for which kind of script - coming up soon! )
Bamboo reed pens are a great versatile tool to use for calligraphy because the nib can be customised and shaped to any angle that one desires. They are available in different sizes and are reusable as well as eco-friendly!
My first attempt at Gujarati Calligraphy
As soon as my bamboo reed pens arrived, I cut the nib end in the angle needed and tried with some basic strokes first and then hopped on to trying some letters straight away! My reference point was some pictures shared by my mentor Aksharaya’s Gujarati manual.
Observations:
PATIENCE!! where art thou???
This is still work in progress as I practise it daily. I will upload more progress pictures here soon.
P.S. I got in touch with a few Insta friends I had from the type community to learn about I am going make a list of brands and other tools that are available for Indic calligraphy soon. Stay tuned!
