Garman Herigstad started 2015 with an ambitious resolution: he plans on hand-lettering the entire Book of Proverbs to practice calligraphy. He's already started the project, so Herigstad decided to write down a few goals for the next 9 months.
March Update:
It’s been a two months since I started my calligraphy adventure with Proverbs. I’ve decided to set myself some ground rules.
1) Avoid making revisions for the first few months
My main goal for this project is to improve my calligraphy skills by doing a LOT of work. Improvement will come over time. If I try to make revisions too early in the progress, I’ll loose the benefit of the greater skills I hope to acquire over time.
2) Work from alphabet-style memory for the first few weeks
The last time I did any significant calligraphy was about 1986, just before my daughter Lydia was born and my career in computer animation began. I still have a pretty good memory of the various styles I did then. Now I’m trying to just build back the skill of moving my hand and arm smoothly, and I can do that fine with the styles I’m familiar with.
3)Study layout and design
I had worked as an illustrator, lettering artist, calligrapher and graphic designer before my computer animation career. Over time those old skills became rusty. That career was in the pre-Macintosh era when art and printing preparation were done by hand, referred to as “mechanicals” and “paste-ups.” Type was expensive and we indicated type with pencil gibberish called greeking. Those old skills are still valuable now that I’m doing calligraphy and hand lettering. I’m also reading modern graphic design textbooks, master calligraphy books, and anything I can get on traditional sign painting.
4)Do a lot of work
On a 2002 trip back to Thailand to visit my cousin, I brought a sketchbook with me instead of a camera. I showed my trip drawings to my mother, who remarked how bad my drawing had become. She can’t remember saying that, and she wasn’t being mean, just factual. Before I worked with computer graphics I had been drawing often. I spent second grade in Copenhagen after my grandfather died. My mom, sister and I went to visit my grandmother, who emotionally fell apart after her husband died and didn’t want to let my mother leave. So my sister and I were put in a Danish school for a year. The teacher I had didn’t want to spend effort teaching the American boy Danish, and gave me sketchbooks so I could sit and draw while my classmates were doing their lessons. My mom was angry and arranged for a tutor to teach me Danish when I came home from school. But I sure did a lot of drawing. After my mom’s comments on my vacation sketchbook, I decided to take a sketchbook with me everywhere I went. I moved to Beijing for a couple of years and drew in my spare time. I was working half-time on feature film effects and spent most of the rest of the time in Starbucks, the subway, the bus or restaurants drawing. At first I was shy about drawing in public. In Beijing it’s difficult to avoid people, who were curious about my drawing. I got many requests for me to draw people’s pictures. Free models for the price of a cup of coffee. In the two years I was in Beijing I did about 20-40 drawing each day. With 4000+ drawings (I gave away about 10%) my skills improved. I hope that experience with doing a lot of work will have the same benefit with doing a lot of calligraphy and hand lettering.
5)Periodically Evaluate My Progress
I’m not holding sacred (no pun intended) the first few months of my works, and need to go though with a pencil and mark-up any improvements I need to make to the works I’ve produced. Perhaps for later revising the verses I’ve completed. But more-so to improve my eye for the new works I’ll be doing. There’s more goals for me in the coming weeks. Working with new pens, brushes, inks and various papers. Doing extreme size works from very small letters 1/8-in high to large letters over 12-inches tall. I don’t want to spend my money on expensive papers now while I’m trying to improve my hand skills and layout sensibilities. More on those things later.