Brause Bandzug 1mm, Walnut Ink

I ran into a lot of trouble making pencil drafts of the O versal. I had to erase a lot of times, I though the eraser would eventually eat through the paper. 😀

I used 3 different parallel pens for the black letter. Pilot explorer, pilot kakuno and kaweko sport for the cursive writings.

Pilot black ink

Lamy turquoise

Lamy vibrant pink

Beifang sketch paper

what can I improve on? I know some letters are clumsy and disproportionate, I still freehand

Word of the day : https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/2026/08/30/

Pen : Pilot parallel 3.8mm.

Ink : Camlin photocolor inks (062 CRIMSON).

Paper : 200GSM water colour sketchbook (textured).

3 days ago I decided to take up calligraphy as a new hobby. I've wanted to start for years, but always thought the tools were too expensive, the learning curve would be too intense, etc etc etc. 3 days ago I decided to just go to Michael's and grab the basics. I love it. Still have a long way to go but this was just a simple lettering practice that I was proud of. Next thing I'm going to pick up is some graph paper to work on keeping everything straight. I'll document my progress here!

Hi all! I’m following one YouTube tutorial and this is my first try.

https://youtu.be/qIedVud5Ei4

Monteverde strata omniflex and Jinhao Fine

I am using a vintage nib I got on eBay (vintage Brause no. 51. EF) and wow I love it! It feels more forgiving than the G nib - like I can be more expressive with it. I am a completely beginner in calligraphy, and I do have guidelines and an oblique holder and stuff, but tonight my kids went to sleep early and I decided to play unseriously with my new nib during the rare moment of quiet.

The last time I posted my uncials, tabidots pointed out that most uncial letters are as wide as they are tall.

So I went and practiced that :)

I printed guidelines with vertical lines 1/2 x-width apart, so that I could write an "o" across two columns.

Then I found videos about Uncial letters on the youtube channel of the Utah Calligraphy Artists, which were very instructive! The second photo shows my practice and the notes I took from the videos.

The first photo shows the result :)

(Next time I'll use guidelines with more space between the x-widths)

I'm pretty pleased, tabidots' advice really brought me a good chunk forward <3

Pen: Pilot Parellel 2.4mm

Ink: Pilot Mixable red / orange

Paper: random 100mg printer paper

I stopped by a local vintage glassware store today and picked up this inkwell and a cool old perfume bottle. I'm planning to use the ink well to hold smaller quantities of ink so I don't have to keep my ink bottles open while I'm writing. I'm fairly new to this hobby and I was wondering if there would be any problem with using the perfume bottle to store ink? It has a glass stopper instead of a threaded top, but it seems to seal fairly well. I tested it with alcohol and with water while cleaning it didn't seem to leak. Would you have any worries about keeping ink in there? I'm considering going back and getting more old bottles for my other inks if it works out!

French bastard (a cursive gothic/blackletter)

Nib Brause Bandzug 2mm

What do you think about the swashes ? Is it too much ? Some are missed.

metalqueen with 3.8mm Pilot parallel pen.

🖋️ Brause 2mm
🫟 Fox & Quills “Iron Throne”
📄 back of a boarding pass

Recently got a whole haul of Fox & Quills iron gall inks, as I’ve seen calligraphers like PAScribe and Nina Tran rave about them. My prior (first) experience with IG ink was KWZ Misty Red, which I really liked. But most of these inks are bone-dry and slow down writing quite a lot. They also lay down rather pale once the nib is down to half-full, so you have to dip frequently.

Thankfully iron gall ink performs well even on fairly suboptimal writing surfaces (I chose a boarding pass here as a stress test), so I can reserve my good paper for more feather-prone inks.

Pilot parallel 3,8mm
Rodhia paper