Quills — Experimentation

I've been wanting to try my hand at making and using a real quill pen for a while now. Thanks to my wonderful fiancé and family, I was gifted a number of uncured goose feathers and a quill knife this Christmas!

I haven't had an opportunity to take a class on making quills. So before trying it myself, I scoured the web in search of instructions. Most of what I found seems to agree on the basic steps, but the specifics vary.

1. Prepare the feather — Cut off the tip, clean the membrane from the surface and inside of the barrel, trim it to length, and trim off the barbs to make holding it more comfortable.
2. Cure the barrel of the feather (also referred to as tempering or dutching) — Fresh feathers are too soft and flexible to be cut and used as a pen. The barrel is hardened through aging or heat treating so it can hold its shape and last longer. The methods for this process vary quite a bit: from baking the feathers in an oven, immersing them in hot sand or boiling water, to rolling them against a heated metal surface.
3. Cut the quill — The cutting of the writing tip. The steps vary in order, but the shape of the end result is the same.

Guidelines & the AMES Lettering Guide

The Medieval and Renaissance calligraphy I emulate was penned by monks and professional scribes who spent a good portion of their lives perfecting their art. I on the other hand have mundane commitments that come first, and do calligraphy as a hobby in (a portion of) my spare time.

What does this have to do with guidelines? As an amateur calligrapher, pencil guidelines help my calligraphy look better. They are erased when I'm done, leaving straight, evenly-spaced text that matches the appearance of the work of professional period scribes. This article is about the modern tools and shortcuts I use to help me get my projects done, not the medieval methods.

Because of the length of this article, I've divided it into sections to allow you to skip ahead to the subject that interests you, or to more easily take it a bit at a time and return to where you left off.

• Important Terms
• Recommended tools
• The scales of the AMES guide explained
• How to determine line spacing for your script
• Guideline & text spacing examples
• Lining with a ruler
• Using a T-square & drafting board
• Drawing guidelines with the AMES lettering guide (with video!)
• Dealing with Versals (with video!)
• Vertical guidelines
• Final thoughts

Project - Veronica's Tyger's Cub - A.S XLV

Project: Order of the Tyger's Cub for my niece, Veronica Vesalius. I did both the calligraphy and illumination on this scroll.
Words: by Lord Iain of Malagentia.
Paper: Heavy Weight Pergamenata.
Pens: Brause 0.5mm nib.
Ink: Winsor & Newton Sepia calligraphy ink.
Illumination Materials: The ink surrounding the gold leafed areas is India ink from a Rapidograph pen. The Sizing for the Gold is Miniatum with some red W&N ink added to help see where it was painted. The paint is all Holbein Gouache, most of it custom mixed colors.

Technique - Copying a Period Hand

When I started making scrolls, I used the ductus in my calligraphy books for whichever script I needed. As I got more and more comfortable with each of the scripts, I wanted to expand my knowledge and skill by attempting to replicate period scribes' hands.

I would suggest trying this after you have some experience with a few different scripts, and working at a few different sizes. It helps to be comfortable with the pen and forming letter shapes that you can figure out how to make the letters on your own. That said, it can also be a good exercise to train your eye and hand by spending quality time with period calligraphy.

Step 1 - Get a good copy of your example

You want the highest quality version of the original you can get to start. I like digital best, as you can zoom in very close, and adjust the contrast and brightness of the image if needed. For my examples in this post, I'm using a contrast adjusted version of the Magna Carta as inspiration, taken from Wikipedia. I was trying to learn this hand for the making of the Serjeanty for Master Phillip Reed.

If the final piece has illumination done by a different artist, work with them to make sure the hand you choose goes with the illumination style of the finished piece. I'm fortunate to work with many illuminators who know my interests, and they provide me with a specific example that includes calligraphy they are using as inspiration.

Technique - Gothic Textura Quadrata: An Alternate Ductus

Gothic Textura Quadrata is an absolutely gorgeous script, dense and architectural it is a wonderful example of how letters can be art in their own right. It's also very difficult to write well, especially for a beginner. There are two details about this variant of gothic that are extremely important to get right: perfectly vertical strokes and precise spacing between those strokes. Oddly, the calligraphy books I've read focus on how to draw each letter with the minimum number of strokes. Their method helps write faster, but it is harder to be precise and get those critical details right.

For a beginner, that can make this script extremely frustrating. So I'd like to present alternate instructions for drawing Gothic lettering, hopefully making this script easier to learn for the beginning calligrapher.

Project - Songs of the East - A.S. XLVI

The inner Title Page. I'm extremely happy with how the flourishing on the S and E came out. 

Project: A gift of thanks to Duchess Jana von Drachenklaue V, commissioned by their Majesties Gregor & Kiena: a book of Songs of the East.
Words: By many Eastern songwriters, compiled by Baroness Aneleda Falconbridge.
Binding: Master Iheronimus Brückner.
Cover Painting: Mistress Carolyne de la Pointe.
Paper: Strathmore 300 series Bristol Board.
Pens: Multiple... I know I used different sizes of Brause, Mitchell and Hiro Rond, as well as a few different pointed nibs. The most interesting was a special lining pen for the 5 line musical staff. I purchased a lining nib as well, but could not get it to work reliably.
Ink: Sepia, red and a yellow-sepia mix of Winsor & Newton calligraphy ink.
Size: The paper was 16 x 9 folded into four pages, margins for the usable area on each page were 6 3/4" by 8 3/4".

In the summer of 2011 I was asked to help on a large project - the creation of a book of songs to be given as a gift by their Majesties Gregor and Kiena to Duchess Jana upon their stepping down on October 1st. One reason I was asked to help is I have a background in music. I know enough about musical notation that I was comfortable calligraphing it.

Technique - Practicing with the Pen

A Rotring 2.3 mm ArtPen held flat against
10 square per inch graph paper with a 45° twist.

So you've picked up your first calligraphy pen. Before you start trying to learn to write a specific calligraphic script, get comfortable with the pen. I'm going to start this post by discussing how and why using these pens is different from modern round-tipped pens, and then suggest some practice exercises that will help prepare you for calligraphic scripts.

Getting used to the pen

Using a calligraphy pen is very different than using most modern pens. In many ways, the techniques you use are more like using a wide paintbrush. While getting used to the pen, concentrate on:

1. keeping the writing edge of the nib flat on the paper.
2. moving the pen from your shoulder and elbow, not your wrist and fingers.
3. keeping the angle of the nib consistent.
4. getting crisp lines.