The cool thing about living in a big city is that you don’t need a car, so when going around I take the bus or subway. Usually carrying a notebook with me, sometimes I write some idea, a sudden thought, notes on work & lately… calligraphy!

MY DEAR ROTRING ART PEN, 16 years later

Some things are meant to last: when I was 19 years old, I got my first real job as an administrative assistant at Pelikan – which is also Rotring importer – here in Buenos Aires.

As employees we had a great deal in discounts to buy merchandise & my desk was right in front of the Rotring technical department, so sometimes I would get goodies just for being there. Still, I didn’t need an excuse to stock myself up with pens, pencils, rapidographs, inks, paints, lettering stencils, etc, that I still have and use today.

Among my memories I knew I had a Rotring Art Pen, that I found again a while ago, washed it with soft detergent & warm water, rinsed, and dried with hair dryer, it works perfectly!
Now you can see me on the bus, lettering away:

I also found that I’m not the only one that loves the Art Pen, and the blog Making a mark has a great post dedicated to it.

*The ornament on the side of this post is from the font Floralia by Manfred Klein.

As a part of my later calligraphic incursion I got THE ENCYCLOPEDIA of CALLIGRAPHY TECHNIQUES by Hardy Wilson.
I have to say here that this is one of those cases that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover: it looked kinda like a simple craft’s book, but had really good reviews, so I decided to go for it. I never imagined that it would be so good. Really useful layout, easy to follow instructions, great examples of the different styles & tools.

Most importantly, it clearly shows the ductus, which indicates the movements of the hand to get the precious shape:

I couldn’t decide which tool to try first, which style, whatever the ductus… started to mix & match: inks, brushes, nibs, pencil. From the first round here are the vowels that I’ve drawn:

Later that night, watching TV, I couldn’t stop even while listening to a very inspiring speech:

*The ornament on the side of this post is from the free font Schluss Vignetten by Dieter Steffmann

Yanina Arabena is a young graphic designer that we employ on occasion to do some book design work with us. Lately she has been doing a lot of experimental calligraphy. Here is one example of her beautiful work and you can find more on her Flickr pages.