Hi Michael. Left handed calligraphy can be a challenge, but you could also look at it as an opportunity in that coming from it with a slightly different slant (no pun intended), can also help distinguish your style. There are a number of great calligraphers who are left handed. Here is a link to a Yahoo group where a lot of calligraphers discuss various topics and you might get some good advice:

http://www.calligraph.com/cyberscribes/

First of all, know that traditional calligraphy hates lefties.
I don't care what fancy defense any apologist comes up with.

If a leftie wants to produce the illusion of traditional calligraphy,
he has to write sideways* or hold the pen upside-down, or engage in
some other contortion; I guess you have to figure out which ruse is
the least awkward for you.

In terms of books, this one is good: "Left-Handed Calligraphy", V Studley

* What Noordzij prescribes.

--

I recommend you personally try to invent special rules for lefties.

hhp

Thanks for the comments. Maybe I can learn to write backwards. Ragged-left, perhaps?

On the "Handwriting repair" PDF you can find here:
http://briem.net/
there is a chapter dedicated to lefties.

There are special pens available for left-handed calligraphy.
No different in principle than the special pens used by right-handers for copperplate script.

This is not a harsh tone Hrant just thoughts based on your thoughts and my experience with people in a field that you are not a practitioner.

Why does it have to be a "conspiracy of exclusion?" Hate is a pretty ugly word Hrant. Struggle is a part of life. There are many lefties out there who do damn fine work and do not whine or think the field is unfair. Some of these people were giants in the movie and advertising industry. Every leftie I have ever encountered has intimated that discovery was the best part of learning the craft... not a long term burden!

As a rightie I often have to adapt, in fact I built my diversity by using tools that do not fit into the traditional mode of execution and expression.

There are a number of books out there Michael... figure out which one works best for you. Search left-handed calligraphy.

Michael

No different in principle than the special pens used by right-handers for copperplate script.

Actually, a bit different in construction, but the basic idea is to angle the edge of the nib, relative to the stem of the pen, differently than in a regular (right-hander) pen.

I taught a calligraphy class to a group of general design students, and acquired left-handed calligraphy pens (Sheaffer, IIRC) for those that needed them, although some decided they were unnecessary.

Thanks for the further comments. At least I know that I shouldn't give up before I begin! As hrant and Michael say, I should try to make the left-handed-ness an advantage, not a disadvantage.

"Traditional calligraphy" does not designate a person, or other feeling and thinking being. As such, to say that "traditional calligraphy hates lefties" is simply a figure of speech; it is not an imputation of hatred or bigotry to the calligraphic community. When people are unfair it is blameworthy, but that life is often unfair is just a fact.

It was just a short way of stating a simple fact: attempting to write traditional calligraphic styles with the left hand in normal writing orientation will be difficult and will tend to produce poor results. There are workarounds; after all, right-handed people do calligraphy in Hebrew (traditionally by writing sideways, as Hrant mentioned) and Arabic.

If one is making a master copy for reproduction, rather than an individual original, I suppose one could actually write the mirror reflection of what one intends to produce... perhaps using a mirror to see your result!

Look up John DeCollibus on Google or YouTube (start with his home page: http://www.beyondwordsscript.com/about.htm). Lefties can do awesome calligraphy.

The videos showing John DeCollibus writing are very instructive. Note that all the script styles that he writes are split nib, expansion stroke styles. I've long maintained, on Typophile and elsewhere, that these styles are the natural domain of lefties, since they avoid the problems inherent in the broad nib, translation stroke styles. Writing these styles, the lefty is at no disadvantage or awkwardness.

Plus you get to listen to lots of baroque music, and how cool is that!

Come to think of it, I don't know a single famous lefty in the entire history of Chinese calligraphy. On the other hand, the ability to write with both hands -- either separately or simultaneously (same text, of course, and normal, not mirrored) if one's really good -- has always been considered a high art in China, though I doubt any living CJK calligrapher is capable of simultaneous writing.

Does any one know if right-to-left scripts like Arabic are more friendly to lefties? Are there any famous left Arabic calligraphers?

No "lefty" has to ever be intimidated by anything. They do things differently. I like that.

henrypijames - What history of Chinese calligraphy are you talking about? You are probably well informed to make such a claim but the calligraphers of the Tang Dynasty (the finest years of Chinese history for me) are not documented that well except for their work.

pbc

Actually, we now know a lot about the way Chinese calligraphy was performed even at the time of Wang Xizhi (303-361 BC, in Jin Dynasty, which the Chinese themselves -- including later generations like those in Tang -- regard as the grand epoch of calligraphy): How people used to sit, lay out the paper, hold the brush, and so on. Many of the things we know today were unknown -- or presumed in ways that have turned out to be wrong -- a few decades ago, but recent historical and archaeological research has brought them into light.

To be clear, I'm not a calligrapher myself -- not even an amateur. But the person in my family who taught me a bit of calligraphy when I was a child is a professor of Chinese calligraphy history. He's also not the only person with professional background I discuss those topics with from time to time.

Statistically, I'd say in (modern) Latin handwriting, the pen is moving left-to-right about twice as often as right-to-left (counting only on-paper time and disregarding vertical and near-vertical movement). Comparatively, LTR movement is at least four times of of RTL movement in (modern) Chinese, because the horizontal stroke ("heng"), which is the most frequent type of stroke, is always drawn left-to-right. In other words, Chinese has a much stronger (horizontal) directional bias than Latin.

Does anyone know what the LTR to RTL movement ratio looks like in Arabic?

I'd guess that Chinese calligraphy might be easier for a lefty than Latin script calligraphy. A key reason why lefties struggle with a broad-nibbed pen is that it's difficult to find an angle that's both natural and that allows the nib to be drawn across the paper as it's designed to be. With Chinese calligraphy the tool of choice is a brush rather than a pen, which has a flexible rather than a rigid tip and deposits ink on paper in a very different way. And if I'm not mistaken, the angle at which the brush is held is nearly vertical, which is just as easily done with the left hand as with the right.

I doubt any living CJK calligrapher is capable of simultaneous writing.

At a park at Chengdu, Sichuan Province, I saw a man writing on the walkway with two brushes simultaneously, one in each hand, using water instead of ink. The characters written by the left hand (I think) were mirrored, though. Unless it was the case that I happened upon the one street calligrapher in China who does that, it can't be that rare a practice, and perhaps there are even those who write normal un-mirrored characters simultaneously with both hands.

And yes, Aric, you make good points about Chinese calligraphy being more amenable to lefties. I learned some Chinese calligraphy when I was young (a bit before Korean calligraphy, actually). I had already got used to writing with a pencil, held at an angle to the page with the fingers close together and the wrist resting on the paper for support, so it was difficult to transition to holding the brush vertically with enough space maintained in the inside of my hand to grasp an egg (I think that's how they taught it). This and the fact that it's a round brush means that there is no angle bias at all with Eastern brush calligraphy.

Make your southpaw your trademark instead of trying to adapt to the norm. Create something new! That’s my advice.

Interesting analyses for Chinese.

> Does any one know if right-to-left scripts
> like Arabic are more friendly to lefties?

I think in theory that's true, but in practice that's not allowed to surface.

hhp

@Jongseong: First of all, writing mirrored text simultaneously with both hands is easier -- by magnitudes -- than writing normal text (which is why I emphasized "normal, not mirrored"). Second of all, writing merely readable text simultaneously with both hands is again easier -- by magnitudes -- than produce something good enough to be considered "calligraphy". For it to be a real simultaneous calligraphy, the product of both hands need to be both as good as what the calligrapher would normally produce with his normal hand -- in fact, it should be unrecognizable which sheet is written with which hand. That is incredibly difficult.

@Hrant: Is there any society in which a right-to-left script is used and lefthand writing is generally tolerated?

It's not just incredibly difficult; it's probably pretty much impossible unless you're inherently "wired" a certain way, which extremely few people are.

--

Lefthanded writing is tolerated fine in most cultures with RTL writing; my point is that formal calligraphic instruction in any script will tend to subvert lefthandedness.

The only way lefthanded calligraphy can truly flourish is to establish a distinct school that formally rejects the righthand school. A lefthander following a righthand-centric course will certainly learn much, but can never reach his full potential.

hhp

Individual Hebrew letters are traditionally written left to right, in the manner of a right hander primarily pulling the pen to the right and down. However, each new letter is put down on the line in the other order: starting on the right, then each new letter to the left of the previous letter.

Hence whatever special challenges a left-hander faces with Latin calligraphy will be similar in Hebrew.

A couple of points regarding right-to-left scripts:

The direction in which a script is read doesn't necessarily imply anything about the direction in which it is written. This is something one learns from watching Arabic calligraphers rotating the page and writing top-to-bottom.

Writing direction is independent of pen angle, and it is the latter factor that determines the normative patterns of letters when they are written with contrasting stroke tools, especially translation stroke tools such as broad nibs or flat brushes. One can ignore those normative patterns, of course, but the result will be that the letters look weird to most readers. Normative contrast patterns are so basic to script identity that reversing them frequently gives the impression that one is attempting to make a pastiche of a different writing system, e.g. writing Latin letters à la Devanagari.

Again, my advice to a lefty would be to look at tools (brushes, split nibs, low contrast tools) that do not enforce a translation stroke pattern, and at styles of lettering within a writing system that favour left-handed execution.

Do all (or a majority of) Arabic calligraphers rotate the page and write top-to-bottom?

I believe it depends on the style being written.

I suppose calligraphy can have nothing to do with the way one normally writes. If you learn to draw characters at 90 degrees instead of 0, then there's probably no principle that says your characters should be any worse.

@John Hudson: That's interesting John; I guess it would make sense actually. But are there any left-handers who write with LTR languages upside-down? Probably few, if any. I normally rotate the page at about a 60 degree angle when I'm writing to avoid smudging, but I notice that John DeCollibus has more of a 90 degree angle when doing calligraphy.

Incidentally, I once had a teacher at school who thought that someone else had written my homework for me, because she couldn't believe a left-handed writer could write as neatly as I had.

@Murphy: amazing how dumb some teachers can be, huh?
BTW, I'm another 60-degree-page-rotator...

However, writing in any way that you can't read what you've written in realtime of course cannot be optimal. Forcing a leftie to write sideways or upside-down simply to exactly match what a rightie would produce is dysfunctional, and depressing. It's really no different to how leftie children were (and sometimes still are) physically forced to not use their left hand when doing anything.

BTW, do read this:
http://www.typophile.com/node/48843
And check out the interesting trials that John produced.

hhp

latin, chinese, arabic or hebrew?

Cheers!

I think I'll start with the Latin. Still looking for a good book. I would like to look in the book before buying, but living in Germany makes it quite difficult (good English book stores are hard to find where I live). My other thought was just to buy a standard calligraphy book with decent reviews from Amazon and see if I can work through it left-handed.

Hrant, I've been thinking about your comments in that other thread regarding writing 'naturally' vs 'contortion'. If you look at the ways in which different writing systems are written around the world, I don't think you can easily define what constitutes a 'natural' way of writing: all writing is cultural. I think it is better to talk in terms of comfort and ergonomics. In which case, it is interesting to note that the common hand position of European writing, in which the wrist is flexed backwards is less comfortable over a long period of time than what we would think of as a rotated position in which the hand is in-line with the lower arm and the wrist is not flexed. As someone who suffers from rotator cuff mobility problems and pain, I'm very much aware that there are habitual positions that are very bad for the body and that should be avoided. But I think the range of comfortable positions for writing is greater than perhaps a culturally biased notion of what is 'natural' might suggest.

I have to agree, and would even suggest that all writing is unnatural! The human body has not evolved to hold an implement to make marks on a surface. What I'm getting at is that what makes traditional calligraphy comfortable (or less uncomfortable) for righties also makes things commensurately more uncomfortable for lefties.

hhp

Hrant: The human body has not evolved to hold an implement to make marks on a surface.

Oh, I beg to differ. Consider the precise motor skills that are necessary to move an arm -- not fingers, not hand, but the whole arm -- to produce accurate movements of just a couple of millimetres. It's as if the entire arm is a pantograph, translating the movement of major muscle groups into very small marks on a surface. Now consider that writing is one of the very few and by far the most common skill that requires such a capability.

What I'm getting at is that what makes traditional calligraphy comfortable (or less uncomfortable) for righties also makes things commensurately more uncomfortable for lefties.

Ain't demographics a bugger!

> Consider the precise motor skills

1) More than precision, I was speaking -as you were before- of ergonomics.
2) Surely that inherent, primordial ability [partly] led to us writing the way we do, not the other way around.

hhp

Wow, we're getting pretty deep here. I've taken the plunge and bought two books. I'll go down to the shops this weekend and see if I can't get some supplies to start me off. I hope to post some actual calligraphy soon!

If we are talking about ergonomics, plenty of things that are deeply ingrained in our cultures are anti-ergonomic. Conventional musical instruments are an obvious example. I guess we should leave behind the unnatural sounds created by physical instruments and explore digitally created soundscapes. ;-)

Hrant, it seems a chicken and egg sort of question, whether we write the way we do because of fine motor skills that are an ‘inherent, primordial ability’ or whether we developed such an ability as we practised mark making. An adaptationist could easily make a case that being able to e.g. paint animals well on the walls of a cave would lead to greater social status and hence to both better nutrition and to more opportunities for reproduction. I'm not much of an adaptationist, though, and while I wouldn't presume an ‘inherent, primordial ability’ I would be inclined to think that there are innate potentials or capabilities that might be developed into abilities or characteristics. And we see this with regard to fine motor skills even today: we have this capability, but it must be fostered and practised by each individual, usually at quite a young age, or else it doesn't develop. This is parallel to many other innate capabilities, which we probably all have but which we lose if we do not develop them. There are no tone-deaf people among speakers of tonal languages, because they all develop their capability to produce and recognise verbal tonality at a young age; whereas speakers of English generally have much poorer tone sensitivity unless they have studied music quite seriously. Depressingly, one can imagine all sorts of innate capabilities that we might possess, but which we have neglected and lost.

Evolution is an imprecise process, in which mutations tend to be surplus to requirements (since mere survival is the only requirement): you need mutations that make it possible to survive in a sub-Saharan grassland, and you end up with Bach.

John, good analysis.

Michael, if you ever want to get deeper into calligraphy, I would recommend the best book on the topic that I own, Claude Mediavilla's monumental "Calligraphie" (which however is in French, with the long-promised English edition still to become reality).

hhp

>The human body has not evolved to hold an implement to make marks on a surface.

Be serious for a moment. Ready? Watch a master work, and then say that again.

Cheers!

Hrant: Claude Mediavilla's monumental "Calligraphie" (which however is in French, with the long-promised English edition still to become reality).

?

I have had the English edition for many years. It was published as Calligraphy by Scirpus Publications in Belgium in 1996, but doesn't seem to have been well distributed. It is available in the US from the calligraphy specialist bookseller John Neal:
http://www.johnnealbooks.com/prod_detail_list/25/4

There are a couple of copies available for sale on ABE, but for more than double the retail price quoted by Neal, presumably reflecting the poor distribution and the impression that it must be out of print.

I agree that it is the very best book on the subject.

> I have had the English edition for many years.

Oh. Sorry.
I couldn't find it in a quick search, so I assumed it was still in the works.

hhp

>The human body has not evolved to hold an implement to make marks on
>a surface.

It didn't evolve to drive tractors either but it does. :o) Tractors were "evolved" to be driven by humans, as marks made on paper have evolved according to what the human body is capable of.

I'm a left-handed calligrapher and with the exception of the ruling pen, I have not found it to be a problem at all. In fact, with pointed pen it seems to be an advantage--I still use the oblique holder but some lefties do not. And as others have said, the broad-edged nib needs to be cut at the opposite slant. But the essence is this: in calligraphy, the most important thing is seeing--i.e. line, slant, spacing, curve, negative space etc. --- and getting what your mind's eye envisions onto the paper. When you approach it that way it doesn't matter which hand you write with. It helps to make sure any teacher you work with is of similar mind; I've run into a few "old school" types who don't want to bother with me when they could be critiquing my work as they do anyone else's.

> in calligraphy, the most important thing is seeing

I agree. But most of all I'd be curious where you think that puts the Noordzij recommendation* of writing vertically (such that you can't fluidly write and read).

* Shared by Arabic to some extent.

> I've run into a few "old school" types who don't want to bother with me

Why do you think that is?
(You don't think they believe lefties are Evil, right?)

hhp

in calligraphy, the most important thing is seeing

I disagree. I think most (professional) calligraphers have a precise mental picture of what they want to draw, but their hands fail them in reproducing the lines from their imagination.

In fact, I believe most calligraphers are seeing to much: They tend to over-adjust their movement -- and often even their plan -- midway because seeing the partial picture (or even the current partial curve) makes them insecure about whether it's right. Maybe if they rely less on their eyes and more on the mental picture in their head -- go into a meditative trance, if you will, so as to tune down the non-stop visual feedback analysis that's messing with them, they would produce more fluent and natural results.

Hrant: But most of all I'd be curious where you think that puts the Noordzij recommendation* of writing vertically...

I think it would be useful to provide the Noordzij text to which you refer.

Well, sure - I just don't have a link.

Basically he says that if a left-handed calligrapher wants to reproduce the traditional forms comfortably, he should turn the paper 90 degrees and write the letters on their sides, arranged vertically.

My point has always been that not being able to
read what you're writing isn't "comfortable" at all.

hhp

It seems to me that if you taught yourself to calligraph that way, you would learn to read sideways far sooner than you would begin to master any aspect of the writing. People generally don't have trouble recognizing a word at a time sideways. I wouldn't sit down and read a novel sideways, because it would slow my reading down to the speed of writing, but it should work fine while writing, because you write a word at a time and have to be somewhat conscious of the shapes on a stroke-by-stroke level anyway. But maybe I'm projecting my experiences as an ambigram specialist, wherein I do a lot of mental rotation.

> you would learn to read sideways far sooner than
> you would begin to master any aspect of the writing.

1) The human vision system favors a horizontal arrangement far
more than vertical. AFAIR there have even been studies to show this.

2) I might possibly agree when it comes to traditional
calligraphy, but that "any" there is certainly too much.
Lefties do write, after all! And I believe there are forms
for them to write that are both comfortable and attractive.

hhp

Henry

Pure malarky!

Thanks Michael, I was just waiting for that :)

Why do some "old-timer" calligraphy teachers brush off lefties?
(I'm not saying they're right in doing so.)

hhp

Hrant, I'm sure you agree that when ‘reading’ what you are in the process of writing one is not engaged in immersive reading. Indeed, insofar as one will most of the time be looking at partially formed words, one isn't really reading at all. My concern in such a situation would be whether it is easier to make spelling mistakes if one isn't looking at the text at a normal angle. I wonder? But the other thing to bear in mind is that we're not talking here about everyday writing but about calligraphy, i.e. writing as a kind of art, and a lot of practice goes into that. I doubt if the challenges imposed by having to rotate the page present major difficulties that could not be overcome with such practice.

I think taken as you present it, Noordzij's statement is simply fact. He's not saying that this is an ideal way in which to write, he's saying that if a lefty wants to produce the traditional forms of [Latin-script broad-nib] calligraphy the only comfortable way to do this in terms of the relationship of hand and pen to the page is to rotate the page. Certainly, it is a suggestion far more sensitive to the ergonomics of left-handed writing than the kind of contortions to which I regularly see lefties reduced, even if in some of those positions the page is better oriented for reading.

I can see that "reading" could be misleading in the context of
me saying it on Typophile. :-) You could call it "recognizing",
and something that's rotated 90 degrees is essentially not the
same thing, not as easy to recognize, not "natural".

> Noordzij's statement is simply fact.

Only if you use a very narrow meaning for "comfortable".
Separating the creation of text from its use is misleading.

Noordzij's stance only makes sense for blind lefties. :-/

hhp

Hrant, as I wrote, I don't think Noordzij is suggesting that writing with a rotated page is in any sense optimal, even in terms of comfort. He's saying that this is the most comfortable way, given both the constraints and the options, for a lefty to create these particular forms of letters. He's not saying it is some kind of perfection of comfort, but that it will be easier, less tiring and more egnomically sound to do it this way than to do it in another way.

Separating the creation of text from its use is misleading.

I think stating that as some kind of general rule is misleading. There are lots of different kinds of text in and on lots of different kinds of media. Arguably, the very constraints imposed by the broad-nib translation stroke make it less important for the text to be angled relative to the writer in a particular way, because the writing tool itself will largely control the stroke contrast. Being able to see letters as they will be read becomes more important in outline-drawn letters, when one cannot rely on the tool for such control.

Again, remember that we're not talking about everyday handwriting; we're probably not even talking about something like professional scribal text creation of the kind that doesn't really exist anymore outside of a couple of Urdu newspaper publishers.

You are welcome William!

I tire of theorists analyzing what I and others do.

@ Hrant My first student was a leftie. I took her on more as a learning experience; it taught me that traditional approaches to my art are better left to the theorists. I cant my paper, in one style I work totally perpendicular to the paper, other times I work upside down, I both push and pull strokes, I hold my pen incorrectly etc. When I taught I always heard "You cannot do that," to which I replied, I do whatever it takes to get it done! One must adapt.

Adaptation is integral and essential to the craft. In is not an affliction to lefties only... it is necessary to "survival."

@ Henry

To me lettering is like chess. The first stroke one lays down essentially determines all that follows.

"They tend to over-adjust their movement -- and often even their plan" (and you know this how?)

I do words, not letters. The letter knowledge is stored deep within, it is a subconscious guide, the execution is spontaneous based on THAT knowledge and the "landscape" that determines the "fit/execution."

Michael

John, something I should have brought up earlier:
But why does Noordzij (and others) worry so much about reproducing
the traditional rightie forms? Instead of promoting a more clever
way of making lefties uncomfortable (in the broad sense) he should
be thinking of how to make them equals. This actually interestingly
parallels the relationship of black and white in letterforms, where
I maintain chirography can want to treat the white equally, but in
the end simply cannot.

> we're not talking about everyday handwriting

Indeed, I -and we- have to admit that having to read one's
calligraphy/writing isn't nearly as relevant as it used to be.

Michael: I'm actually in line with much of what you say, but I do
see the need to discuss why some calligraphy teachers dismiss lefties.

> One must adapt.

Bravo. Now, what have we done to adapt to lefties?

hhp

@ Hrant

"why some calligraphy teachers dismiss lefties"

They are scared shitless. I taught my first student from underneath a clear glass table because I could not watch the letters as she made them... her hand covered them. I adapted... to her adaptations.

"I maintain chirography can want to treat the white equally, but in
the end simply cannot."

By calligraphy's very nature one is "laying black on a white surface." One must always strive to treat the white equally, even use it to their advantage. You seem to be more obsessed with the forms themselves, if that be the case I have no solution for you. I adore traditional forms even when they are adapted to abstract. I am playing nice now Hrant. Traditional forms are what they are, Arrighi did the same thing I do. Had the same intentions. Used the same tools, basically. Was concerned with the same black/white interplay that I am.

Jokingly Michael says... if you want to take calligraphy to task beat up on the blackletter guys! No respect for white :-) And yet weren't they playing off the white, or using it as a foil?

After about ten years of practice I realized that white played as an important role as the "ink" did. It will not change my take on those forms. Only their relationship in a line of words.

Here ya go. When I look at my house I see strong horizontal lines of say writing (the siding) broken by a secondary rhythm (large apertures, windows). It is to me a "figurative" use of black and white. I don't see every board (letter/word) I see texture and design.

To me letters are architecture, and tradition provides, for me at least, stability. The guys who put it up were lefties and just held their hammers at a different angle. :-)

Hrant: But why does Noordzij (and others) worry so much about reproducing the traditional rightie forms?

Presumably because they are the letters of our alphabet.

Do you remember my scans of Latin letters written with rotated and reversed pen angles in an earlier thread? Not only do they look freakish, some shapes simply don't work because they are predicated on a particular angle. The shapes of letters are not abstract concepts or even skeletons to which arbitrary patterns of stroke weight and contrast can be applied. They are cultural artefacts that evolved through writing with particular tools, and their normative shapes reflect those tools and the dominant writing practices of the time in which they evolved.

John

You are truly what I would like to be when I grow up :-) Informed, persuasive and eloquent.

> they are the letters of our alphabet.

That's giving one particular rendering
of the alphabet way too much credit.

hhp

LOL Hrant.

Hrant, consider: most of the letters we read, write, typeset, etc. are lowercase letters. What are these? Where did they come from? As it happens, we have a huge wealth of palaeographic evidence that documents the development and evolution of these letters during the mediaeval period, i.e. a record of how these letters came to have the normative shapes that they have. And that evidence is pretty much entirely of minuscule letters written with a broad-nib at a fairly consistent angle. This is the crucible in which the shapes of our letters were formed, and if the tool had been different or the angle had been different, we would reasonably expect those shapes to be different. Like it or not, this does put constraints on how these letters can be written with that tool, and even some constraints on how they can be written with other tools, although changing tools always introduces new freedoms as well as new constraints.

Now, why would a lefty want to go to the trouble of adapting to these constraints so as to be able to write these letters? I suppose there are individual answers to that, but it seems to me that most people who want to take up calligraphy, regardless of their handedness, do so because they have seen and been inspired by works of calligraphy. Since calligraphy, in every scribal culture I can think of, is a deeply traditional craft, mastering historical exemplars is one of the things that is both expected and, I am sure, one of the things people want to do when they sign up for calligraphy courses.

Conversely, if one wants to invent new ways of writing, without learning to master traditional styles, one might as well just stay at home and start playing with tools and media. Don't go to a teacher if you're not interested in the thing that the teacher is able to teach you.

To me calligraphy is now art, which means it's about self-
expression, not emulation; which means lefties have to rebel.

> Don't go to a teacher if you're not interested in
> the thing that the teacher is able to teach you.

But sometimes he will teach you something in spite of himself!
Everybody has something to teach anybody, but any student
necessarily has to filter and repurpose what the teacher says.

When I took that calligraphy class I was smiling and learning
the whole time. But I wasn't smiling about or learning what
the teacher thought I was (which, if he's an ideal teacher, he
wouldn't mind at all).

--

BTW, Michael, this isn't the ideal place to do this, but I've
long wanted to get an expert third-party opinion on this
small piece I did at the end that class:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48413419@N00/222343485/

This might go without saying, but: brutal honesty preferred.

hhp

Hrant: To me calligraphy is now art, which means it's about self-expression...

Well, you've always been wrong about that. Self-expression is one particular purpose of some art; it's also a fairly recent, romantic view of art, which cannot explain most of the art that has been made in most of the world throughout most of human history. Art expresses many things, and many of these, e.g. nature, culture, are very much bigger than the self.

An art that only expresses the self, frankly, isn't up to much. I've been trying to find the passage in one of Bringhurst's essay where he says something to this effect, but perhaps his conclusion is all that needs to be stated: art can express the world. He and I happen to live in a place where art of the aboriginal inhabitants demonstrates this in particularly powerful ways. But a walk around any museum in the world will quickly convince you that art is expressing more than the paltry self of the artist.

I concede that art doesn't only express, and there is expression beyond art.
And it's certainly true that any expression goes beyond the self. In fact I've
often said that there is no pure art (or pure anything).

My wording was sloppy/rushed. Basically I guess what I was getting at
is that a leftie who is mainly interested in following in the footsteps of
righties is a largely boring an irrelevant person.

hhp

Whoa, in light of what John just said and what you have asked I am hamstrung... well maybe not. John hit it on the head. Edward Johnston said letters must reflect their times.

Hrant said...To me calligraphy is now art,

In a sense you are right. Today it is self indulgent and ill informed, in a lot of cases, and for the most part reminiscent of post pubescent rebellion. To be quite honest, it is an affront to the black and white interplay that you and I dance around.

As to your example Hrant, it is an admirable representation for a new student. I am not going to nit pick because I see it for what it is, an valiant effort. Could it become a typeface... sure, if you made some adjustments. Is it good calligraphy... it is certainly a great start. However, as a nun, I would have rapped your knuckles with a ruler for the flourish on Verona... Just kidding Hrant :-)

Why would effort EVER be boring or irrelevant?

And where in the hell did Henry go to... I have some issues with him :-)

Yeah, I've suddenly become rather busy these few day. But to briefly answer your question: As a non-calligrapher myself (but with some basic training during my childhood, as stated before), my views are based on conversations with professional calligraphers I know (there are some in my family, and I know some friends of theirs, too).

Once again a theorist with friends who dabble. No better research than that :-)

Well, I certainly agree that the onus of marking real progress, of
breaking from the rote of precedent, is on the expert practitioners...

hhp

Now Hrant... I cherish the sarcasm, but did you read my comment on your flourish? Are you left handed? Seriously, who did you study with?

I read those comments. I just can't see any difference in the results; as much I like theory, I have a strong practical streak too. I'm right-handed. Reuben
Allen was my instructor.

hhp

I am not familiar with him but he definitely imparted some visual wisdom to you.

Any difference from what? What theory are you speaking of?

I mean a difference between minding the white and not.
At least not enough of a difference. Or maybe I didn't
get what you were talking about.

http://netra.glendale.edu/cse/instructors/allen.html
BTW, do you like Maury Nimoy's stuff?

hhp

Wait a second - I just figured out when you meant! Sorry.

The flourish: interestingly, I remember Reuben didn't approve either.

hhp