Starting Calligraphy: Position

Hello everyone. Thanks again for watching this series on posture placement and position. This is the third in the series on position. If you haven't watched the other two, posture and placement, please make sure you watch them before you watch this. And so we're continuing with the structure of three. So we have you, the tool, and the paper. So this is slightly more complicated than the other two videos. I am concentrating on a copper plate script with a little bit of information on Spenserian script, but this is principally sort of English round hand, copper plate script. You can use these principles for engrossing and engraver script, but they are slightly different. So just be conscious of what I'm teaching here. Position. Always start with the smallest muscle. The fingers have the least amount of muscles in them, but the most amount of nerves. So we have the fingers, which are mostly sinew. Then we have the wrist. Then we have the hand and the arm, the elbow and the shoulder. Each muscle group, as you move from the fingers up to the shoulders, have more muscles in them. The human body is capable of something called muscular memory. And this is why we have these things called drills. By producing drills or practicing drills, we allow the muscles to memorize the movement. Now, the brain is doing something. It will have to think about the shape in part, but principally it will have to think about the words, how to spell the words, how to put the words together, how to group them on a page. So you don't want to give the brain something else to do. The muscles are big enough to store the movement memory in them so that the brain can actually deal with the spelling and the design. So let's start with the fingers. Well, one of the biggest problems with script is, and all calligraphy for that matter, is a lot of people hold the tool right down at the front. Now, if you're holding the tool down here, chances are you're only really making little finger movements. Now, my fingers are quite big, so I can make quite a large push. My maximum push with my fingers is there. That means that whenever I try to do a straight line, if I have to go above it, I have to push out of my comfort zone. And if I have to go below it, I have to pull out of my comfort zone. And that can cause a lot of strain on the hand. By holding the tool higher up, so notice I'm not down at the nib. I'm slightly higher up. By holding the tool higher up, I have a greater movement. But that movement is generated from the wrist, not from the fingers. The fingers are doing something. They are holding the tool. If you give them something else to do, one of those two things or both of those two things might not work. So, by holding the tool higher up, you allow for a wrist movement and pivoting on the corner of the wrist to produce smoother movements. Notice I'm not making these movements with my fingers. By positioning upwards from the wrist, you can quite easily move from the wrist to the forearm movement. So, the forearm movement is this. Notice it's not a straight line. It's still a curve because I'm on the fulcrum of the elbow. If I wanted a straight line, the muscle must move from the shoulder. So, only the shoulder muscle will give you a line. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, diagonal back or spiral. Notice my nib is facing this way. It should really be facing this way, but that was just for the exercise. For this exercise, I would do these spirals, these oval exercises. Now, one of the other reasons why I want to point out this wrist movement is by using, by holding the pen a little higher up and allowing the wrist to move, you can quite easily move from the wrist to the arm and that allows you to produce. Notice the fingers are holding the tool. They're only applying a gentle amount of pressure, but most of the pressure is from the wrist and I'm going to switch to an arm movement. That would not be possible if I was leaning on the arm because the arm is not allowed to move smoothly. The non-writing hand, and as I'm right-handed, I'm using my left hand, is just holding the page. I'm not like this. I'm not like this. I am just holding the page in place. Now, where you hold the tool is equally important. By holding the tool steeper, you have to apply more pressure to get the tines to spread. That means if you want to do narrower work, it's easier to do narrower work if the tool is slightly steeper. If you would like a really wide letter without damaging the tines, you would hold the nib as flat as possible. You'll also need a lot more ink. This means that this large letter can be produced by the tines and then the tines can revert to slightly smaller writing. Notice I'm increasing the steepness of the tool as I get finer or smaller. We have a really nice range of sizes, even though the tines were spread that widely. Now, I don't know if you've probably noticed that I also have a couching sheet underneath my writing surface. This allows for a little bit of flexibility and spring on the page. Sometimes I write without the couching sheet because I sometimes like the nib to interact with its underlying surface. This also gives me a little bit more of a sharper line as the nib is not sinking into the paper but really sitting on the surface. Again, my fingers are applying pressure but it's my wrist that's doing the movement. Again, going from the wrist to the shoulder to allow for smoother movement is much easier than just going from the fingers. Main tips, try writing holding the tool slightly higher up. Notice I'm here now. My comfort zone is up here, so I've moved so that it would stay in the sun. My comfort zone is up here, quite far away from me, but I am sitting up quite tall so I can see the whole area in which I'm working. Those are the basic structures with position. Now, I'm just going to throw one other thing in. I do actually need a couching sheet for this. This is an oblique holder. In this oblique holder, I need the space around me in order for my arm to produce this muscular movement. You do need the space around you but, of course, the position of the hand in holding this holder is slightly different as well. Again, these holders have a little dimple here, the pressure, where the forefinger sits and the thumb sits behind it. When you hold this tool, there is a tendency to rock over. You simply need to hold the back and turn the tool so that the reservoir that holds is actually facing the axis of the script. Equally, with a straight holder, when you pick up the tool, once you pick the tool up, once you put your hand down to the right, this is not the position you will be in. It will probably be here, which means you are leaning to one side. Ideally, you want to turn the tool so that it is facing the axis of the script. The reservoir, when you look down the shaft of the tool, is divided by the angle of the script, which is 55 degrees. Of course, that has a tendency to happen as well. You will also find, if you look through some of the videos, that I have a tendency to write just a little bit off the axis. There is the axis there. I tend to face about there. There is a variance of tolerance that you can get away with. It is usually between 5 to 15 degrees of the tool, both vertically, horizontally, and off the axis just enough. I hope that was helpful. If you have any comments, please do let us know. Thank you very much.