Self Improvement
What is the purpose of writing? What is the purpose of calligraphy? Is there a difference? In my opinion, it depends on who you are and what you want to do with your life. I remember I always loved school, but I never really enjoyed writing papers or doing calligraphy. At that time in my life, it was all about grades and getting into a good college because after high school graduation, there was no turning back. You had to keep studying or else your chances at landing a job would be significantly reduced. There weren’t many options for me after high school other than going to college; so that’s what I did! “Make good grades”, “Don’t get kicked out” and “Get into a good college” were just some of the mantras I repeated over and over again until they were ingrained in my mind. The artform of beauty was still there, but in the back of my mind, it was just something that I did to fill uptime.
Another example is when I signed up for a calligraphy class at my high school. The class was always interesting because our teacher would give us an assignment and we had to come up with the letters ourselves. If we were able to do what was on the paper, then our work was graded as good! We didn’t have much freedom in terms of what we were writing or how we were writing it; but it felt almost like a game at times. It wasn’t too hard and there weren’t any consequences if you messed up your lettering; so why not experiment?
As you can see, most of my experiences with calligraphy lacked purpose in that they didn’t make me think about life or better myself personally. The colors were pretty and I enjoyed seeing the letters take shape on the paper. I remember when it was all said and done, I would show my parents what we had done in class that day. They always liked my work, but it didn’t feel like anyone was really paying attention to what I had achieved or how much work went into creating these characters. Calligraphy felt like a hobby, an activity that you do when you’re bored with nothing else to do. This wasn’t a bad thing! But now that I’m older and more mature, calligraphy has become more than just something to pass the time. It’s an art for a living – a way of creating beauty in your life by allowing yourself to be creative and fulfilled every single day in some small way (the same is true for writing).
How can calligraphy be used as a tool for self-improvement?
Calligraphy can help you improve your handwriting (in general), patience, and focus through practice! You have to have good basic penmanship before you can really start improving on style because otherwise, it will look sloppy regardless of how beautiful the lettering is! Penmanship is one of those things that most people don’t pay attention too; they just write whatever they want without any thought about their handwriting skills which makes sense considering most people use computers nowadays. Calligraphy, however, is not just about writing characters. It’s also about structure and form, which requires a great deal of thought and practice to become proficient at it.
If you want to write beautifully, you will have to practice! This means learning how to write each character properly first before worrying too much about how the character looks. Then you can start creating your own letters by combining certain characters together or using different kinds of brushes! Getting started is the hardest part because you have no idea what anyone expects from a good calligrapher – all that matters is that it looks nice! It’s difficult for me because I like having standards for myself and others so I know what to expect from people around me but when it comes down to calligraphy…I don’t know where I stand in terms of schoolwork or even if what I’m doing qualifies as “good” enough. We’re all going through this journey together though so let’s learn more about practicing calligraphy on a daily basis; here are some tips:
1) When learning a new lettering style, always write with bold strokes first before going over them with smaller strokes (this ensures even pressure on your pen). If there are gaps between two strokes next to each other then they need more space between them; this way they will look less crowded and easier on the eyes when looking at your work.
2) When writing characters, always start from the top line to ensure that all of your strokes are even and there aren’t any gaps in between them. This is called “the rule of no breaking”. It’s very important because if you don’t keep this in mind then you will discover that your characters look extremely uneven!
The space is a bit off at the top, but overall this piece looks pretty good! I’m still experimenting with how thin my brush should be so it doesn’t look awkward when I’m trying to do more complicated styles. Also, my handwriting isn’t great which makes it harder for me to experiment with different lettering styles – but overall I think this piece turned out pretty well!
I hope that you enjoyed reading about calligraphy and self-improvement! If there’s anything else that you would like me to write about or if there’s something specific that you want me to talk about then please leave a comment below 🙂