Transcripts
1. Introduction: Oh. Do you want to enjoy
lettering and calligraphy without having to fiddle
about with a dip pen and ink? Are you a beginner to calligraphy
and broad edge tools? In this class, we're going to explore two wonderful tools, the parallel pen and
calligraphy markers? We'll look at the best
tools, pros and cons, and some exciting and lively
experiments that you can do, such as making incredible
blended effects? These tools can be
picked up and used immediately without
much preparation? They're also very
portable. I'm Sita. I'm an accredited tutor with the Calligraphy and
Letter y Mark Society, which is the National
Society in the UK. I hold their advanced diploma. These are the tools
that I introduce to beginners in my
workshops in the UK. So join this class and exercise your creativity in new ways.
2. Your project: The project is really simple. Write just one word using
the techniques shown, and upload it to the
project gallery. O make some patterns
and upload these. If you want to make
a longer quote, that's absolutely fine, too.
3. What you need to know about parallel pens and markers: Oh. In this lesson, I will give you some
useful information about the tools
that we're using, and also some pros and
cons associated with each. Let's start with
the parallel pen. The parallel pen
comes in six sizes. The smallest tip is
1.5 millimeters, and the largest
is 6 millimeters. You can easily tell which is which by the
color of the lid. I mostly use the green
3.8 millimeter lid pen in my own work and in
my in person workshops. I also use the 4.5 millimeter
and six millimeter pens. Advantages of the
parallel pen are the robust nib which is
difficult to break or damage. It can even be used
on its corner to make a thin line for
experimental lettering. I most appreciate these pens for their wonderful blending
effects that are possible. I will go into blending
in later lessons. The cartridges come
in 12 bright colors. If you want to change
color quickly, you will need another pen
with another cartridge, so it's best to have more
than one if you can. And if you want
different sizes of nib, then that's a
further investment. One of the disadvantages
of these pens is that the ink provided in the
cartridges is not light fast. I have experienced
colors fading from their original vibrancy in many projects that I have made. Therefore, use the cartridge ink for temporal projects
such as cards, gift tags, and for practice. The ink also has a tendency
to bleed on paper. To get around this,
it is tricky, but possible to fill an empty cartridge with
your ink of choice. Do be careful around India
inks or anything with slllac in as these will
clog and ruin the pen. You can also dip the ink, dip the nib in an
ink of your choice. To mitigate bleeding, I suggest you use a good
quality cartridge paper. Let's talk about the
oligraphy markers. There are many makes available, such as dding, do crafts, and manuscript, but I favor the Kuri take
Zig memory system. These are acid free, photo safe, waterproof, of archival
quality and Light fast. It is a double ended pen with a five millimeter and
a two millimeter nib. I mostly use the
five millimeter end. Be aware that Kura
Tuke also make a 3.5 millimeter and two
millimeter calligraphy marker. These are the ones on
the top br of the slide. These do not have the properties that the memory
system markers have, that they're light fast
archival, et cetera. The colors are also very bright. I have them, but don't tend
to use them very much. The Zig memory markers
also blend wonderfully. Of course, the
size is restricted unlike the parallel pens, which come in a
variety of sizes. The NIB tip needs more care, and you wouldn't want to
use the nib on the corner. I have found that giving
them to children, they can get damaged, whereas the parallel
pen is very robust. With the Zig markers, I don't find any issues
with ink bleeding. So let's move on to
the next lesson.
4. Let's make patterns: Oh. So we're going to start by
making some patterns and understanding how this
broad edge works. I'm going to use these
Sigmakers for this, but you can use the
parallel pens as well. So when we write
with a broad edge, we can be aware of the angle
that we hold that edge, and there I'm holding the
edge absolutely horizontal. And here, I'm holding it
at an angle and here, I'm holding it at a steeper
angle until I go all the way. So it's completely vertical. What other shapes can you
make with the broad edge? So you can practice
diamond shapes, or curves. Or a wave. These are the
shapes that will be parts make up the patterns that be elements
of the patterns. For example, I could
just make a pattern, it could be a border by
just making long and short. S. And I could have changed the color. Or I could take this pattern
and use the other end, small end and just add some
little squares to liven up. Let's t two that way
and two that way. So simple shapes,
making simple patterns, but all of this enables
you to get used to using a broad edge because it isn't immediately that easy to get
the whole edge on the paper. So if we are doing a
kind of wave, often, people will pull up
one edge or the other, and then not get and get a broken line instead
of the full line. So as we said, the other one, a nice one is the
checkerboard effect. You need to keep the pen at 45 degrees to make the squares.
What do I mean by that? I mean that If
that's 90 degrees. That's 45. I need
to keep the pen at that angle for these
to successfully work. And then there are
shapes you can make that you can see how that would be the beginning of an O or you could actually
close them up, maybe put a diamond
in the middle. Or could do something
like this where you kind of make these kind of jumps
and maybe do it backwards. Is maybe a diamond in the middle. What else? That kind of shape. So, these are all
patterns to try, and they will really
help you to get used to using a broad edge nip if
you haven't used one before. So in the next lesson.
5. Blending colours: two methods: So I'm going to show you how
you can blend colors with both the cligraphy markers
and the parallel pens. So I'm going to take
yellow and pink. And I'm going to touch the tip of the yellow just
with the pink. And some of that pink will be transferred and we should get a pinky yellow we blend. Now if we want to be
more direct about it, I could just touch
it to one edge, maybe touch it to both
edges and leave the middle. Let's see what that does. Can you see it's left the
yellow in the middle, but given a pink edge. It's a case of
experimenting with all your different colors to
see what blends you can get. Now, the same thing works
with parallel pens. I will show you that's
got a purple color in it, and this has got a red and I can touch the
red into the purple. And let's see what we get. The red has overtaken
it at the moment. Let's see if some of that
purple starts to come through. You see And then back to the original color, actually, it was a turquoise
in the pen that I'd already been trying
that purple with. So that's the first method. The second method e the colors, and I've put some here
into a pot mixing dish. And the three colors are and you can use
any colors. I've got. This is them, 337, the yellow 205 and blue enates of their eCline
liquid water colors. And I find that they
are really good for dipping my pens in. So let's take this pink and dip it very quickly in the blue. And let's see what happens. Get this gradated effect. And you can do the same thing
with your parallel pen. With these, I'm not as careful. I will dip in all the colors
and see what happens. I just dipped in the yellow. And then I'll dip in the blue. I dip in the red. B in the yellow. B in the blue. B in red. I don't have to
dip every letter, but I quite like getting a
variation in each letter. So you can see what's
possible with the dip in the. Let's just try one
more with the black, this one's got blue in it, turquoise, starting
with turquoise, so I've just dipped it in blue, so that's made no difference, but now in the yellow, look at the green that's
come straight away. Let's this time, I won't do any red and let's
see what happens. I didn't dip on that one
because I'm just letting that color come
now in the yellow. So you don't need to
dip in all three. It can be more effective
just to choose two colors. So if that's what you can
get with the parallel pen. And also, with the Sigmas. So, have fun with that? See
you in the next lesson.
6. Flowers and Leaves: You talk about making some flowers and leaves
with these pens. You do have to change the so I've got some
blending going on. You have to change the
angle of your paper. And remember this pattern that we used when we were
just doing the patterns. One of the secrets to not
making it look too mathematical is to not make all of them exactly the same size. So make some of them smaller. I'm going to do a third one. You could experiment with.
I've done five leaves. You could experiment with more. I'm just going to put some kind of tendrils
with the edge of the parallel pen. Yeah. And you could add little dots, whatever else you can think
of to enhance that design. Another thing you
can do is leaves. So with the edge of
the parallel pen, and then I think I
would turn it this way. And make these shapes. Now, you don't really
want the leaves to be too regular and you could go
back and make that bigger. But what I'm doing is coming off the pen
at one of the edges. Now you don't want to do
that with the fel tips, just to make a different shape so that it looks a bit
more organic and not. Coming off the edge of the pen, and then do one on the top. So we don't want everything to look absolutely symmetrical. So these two designs
could go say on an envelope or next
to some lettering. So that's flowers and leaves. So there's one other
option with leaves, and that's to take your pen
in a kind of she like this. Up and round. Again, you
don't really want to get anything to mathematical. You want it to look
a bit more organic. So there's a few options
there for flowers and leaves.
7. Alphabets: So I'm going to refer you to
this leaflet that comes with the parallel pen
because it shows you six options of scripts, italic, italic capitals, Roman, or what I call that
foundational hand, Roman capitals, and
Gothic letters. So you can study
that little leaflet. And my favorites are italic. And as I say this class is not about learning the scripts. You have to go to my
other classes for that. But that would be
an italic letter A. And this would be my
foundational hand letter A. You've seen me use these scripts in some of the examples I
did when I was blending and if I was making a
capital A, look like that. Now, as I say, learning
these scripts, there's a lot to it and
they need separate classes. But there is one
script that isn't on this leaflet that I quite
like for using these pens. And it's known as
a Neylan script. So I think I'm going
to make it just four of these squares high, but you can use any you like. And it basically uses just
straight and curved strokes. So this would be an A. Now, with a B, we can
start with that straight, but we do need to
swivel the pen round. That's not easy to make a B and a C similarly
needs that curve too. So I'm just going to
do that alphabet, and you can refer to it if you want to try
it with raw pen. Oh So, if you don't know these other
more calligraphic scripts, then have a go with this one, this simple one that we call the Nun script. See you
in the next lesson.
8. Creative techniques: Oh Fun things can you do
with these parallel pens? Well, one of the things
is it's quite easy to make these diamonds in
the middle of your letter. Because it's easier to
take the pen off paper. Or you could stop and just draw a few lines and
then carry on your letter. Another thing you can do with a parallel pen is
use it on its edge. Don't do this with
the Zig markers, and you have to hold
the pen loosely, but you can make
flourishing marks around. Another quite nice thing to do is I'm going to
use a ig maker for this is sparkle shapes. And different angles to decorate your word. So this is another
idea that you can use with either the Sigmachs
or a parallel pa. You can just go over the bottom half of the letter in another color. So you can do this in
whichever script you're using. Be quite nice with
just a little. Mark like that. I think that
improves it quite a lot. Another thing you
can do is to create some dimension is with the
edge of a parallel pen, you can decide to put a line, so you have to decide
either left and underneath or right and below. So I'm going to go
with right and below. So here's the right
here is below. So that's the right. Right. The right side. And below
means just a bit there, a little bit there,
a b, ale bit there. So I keep in my head, right. And below below bit of right. You have to stay consistent. And yet a kind of
three D effect. So big and small letters. So this is more for
people who have a bit of experience with
calligraphy scripts. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to use
these Roman capitals, but I'm going to write the
first one with the big size. Five milli end and then
swap to the other end. So that's the five millimeter. This is the two millimeter end. So that can just provide quite a nice variation
in the script. This is an advanced technique. It's called pen manipulation. But because the nib of the
parallel pen is so robust, it allows us to take up one edge of the
nib in the stroke, and we've done that a little
bit with the leave so far. For example, if I was writing C, I can go off on the
edge like that and then come back and maybe go off
on the edge like that, and that just creates just
a slightly different shape. So I can mix thick and thin.
I could write the word. I can make this into an E. And then I could say I
wanted to write an M now. I could write that part
of the M is a thin line. And then that goes up thin, and then that becomes thin. And thick and thin and thick and thin and thick. So that makes it
a little bit more interesting having
the thin and thicks, but also being able to use a bit of that pen manipulation.
9. Bonus lesson: Opening the parallel pen packet: Oh. So this is the packaging that
the parallel pen comes in. I've got the 3.8
millimeter one here. And I want to open it up and show you what
you'll find inside. I've got a little craft
knife here because sometimes this packaging can be
quite tough to get into. So you can see the pen, the lid, and a couple of
cartridges there. So let's open it up and
see what we can find. So I'm just going
to use a knife. There. So there's a leaflet. I'm still not quite
into the packaging yet. That's it. Open it up that way. Got the lid. A couple
of cartridges. This black rectangle. This blue squeezy
and here's a pen. This is what you've
got in the package. I'm going to open up the pen
and pop the red cartridge in and and I'm just going to give it a
little squeeze to get the ink going down and through. And then pop the
screw on the barrel. Let's see if we can
get it to start working working straight away. So obviously, we've got
the lid, which screws on, and we've got a black
cartridge as well, and then we've got
these two items. So the black rectangle
is for cleaning. So if there is a
blockage in your nib, it's called a
parallel pen because the nib is made of two
parallel metal plates, and what I can do is get this black thing between the two nibs two
sides of the nib. By doing that, obviously, it's a new nib, it
won't be blocked, but sometimes you get a little bit of something in
there that stops the ink, and you can do that,
and then that will be one thing you can
do to help unblock it. That's the black rectangle. What about this squeezy thing? Well, this is for
cleaning as well, and I'll demonstrate that in another lesson where
we'll clean it, but we'll basically
fill it with water, attach it in where the
cartridge was and use the squeeze to push water through out through the
nib to give it a clean. So the last thing we've
got to look at is the leaflet we've got here. So it's a nice little
leaflet, and it has, the anatomy of the pen and explains the things
that I've just explained, the Nib cleaner and the Pipette for cleaning the nib unit. Here, you've got all of the
sizes that the pens come in. I recommend the
three largest sizes. I don't find I get
such a good line with the smaller sizes, although I haven't actually
tried the 3 millimeters, and I'm getting one soon. So other information about
inserting a cartridge, washing the pen, just
like I've just described. So that's all the
technical stuff on the back of this leaflet. You've got some ideas
for practicing. It shows you how to make what the package for the
cartridges looks like, how you can use two pens
to make a graded color. Also, some patterns
you can make. And then this is quite nice. You've got some scripts
and it tells you the nib widths and the
angle for each script. So that's quite a
handy reference, and then some more
fun little examples that you can do with the pen. So that's everything
that's in the package. So you'll know what to expect
when you open your pen up. See you in the next lesson.
10. Bonus lesson: Cleaning the pen and filling a cartridge with ink: In this lesson, I want to
talk about cleaning the pen and also refilling the cartridge with a ink of your choice. So let's just unscrew. Pen, and you can see this
cartridge is nearly finished. I'm going to take that out. Before putting in another color, I'm going to use
this blue pipette and fill it with squeeze it, fill it with water, and then put it in the
end of the pen and push that we'll get rid of the color that's in
there, which was black. If you keep doing that, that should get that pen
ready for another color. I think you need to do
it for quite a while. Especially if your
color was yellow, for example, to work
it all the way. My water has gone
quite black now, but the other thing you can do is open up the pen like this. And take that apart and
wash out both of those. Particularly that side. Then I can put that back in. The other thing is
we've already talked about is using this
black rectangle to get in between two blades like this to clean anything
that stuck in the way. I just wanted to mention that There are two
sides to the pen. The side with that little cut out rectangle and
there's a blank side. Now, some people would suggest that you need to write with
one side or the other. I don't find any difference. You can try both
and see if you find anything that causes
different stroke. That's cleaning the pen. I'm
going to use some walnut ink here and I've got a syringe and I'm just bringing a bit of walnut
ink into that syringe. I've got the empty
cartridge here and I'm just putting the se
into the cartridge, and then put some ink into that cartridge with
the syringe and just put the excess back into the parts. So if we put that on, It's going to take
quite a long time to get that ink that
I've just put in. You can see, it's quite
a messy business. Quite hard to just clear out the ink that was in there
in the first place, especially if it's black. I'm not too worried about doing that because I
know the color I put in. One of the advantages of if it starts to come through
starting to come through, this brown walnut ink and
opening up and giving it another squeeze to
get it to come through. One of the advantages is that this walnut ink doesn't
tend to bleed on the paper. You can see it's coming
through a little bit now. Let's try this. E. It's coming through
a little bit brown now because that's
the wall that ink. But there's still the blends of the black that is
still coming through, so I would needed to actually keep doing the blue
pipette longer. But it shows that you can
put any ink into the pen as long as it's not one
that's going to clog up and out the pen and ruin it.
11. Bonus lesson: Writing in white: So I would like to try dipping
a pen in white garage, a parallel pen, and
seeing what happens. So I think the one I want, well, I've got two
here that I can try. So let's put this one in. Dip it in, obviously, I'm ruining my white garage
and making it a little bit blue. Is it coming out? A little bit. But it's
not really very opaque. But if you don't mind
that sort of see through. Effects. Then you can write with
whites in the parallel pen. You can go over if that didn't
come out strongly enough, you can go over that line. So you can try dipping
with your parallel pen in lots of different inks
and see what happens.
Sunita Auger, Gloryletteringstudio
