Flourish Friday - IAMPETH Reflections: Free Your Hand with Pointed Pen with Barbara Calzolari

 My second day at IAMPETH was spent in Barbara Calzolari's "Free Your Hand with Pointed Pen" class.  It was another great day, as we once again filled pages and pages of practice lettering.

Beautiful Barbara teaching and sharing with the class. I think she is saying something cheeky about American fashion here. :)

 Barbara's work on screen. She is explaining how she releases the tines of the pen at the bottom of a stroke.  Barbara credits the amazing work of Mike Kecseg for inspiring her love of pointed pen variations.

Barbara's delicious work on screen.

Barbara sneaking in some pointed brush and explaining that much of what we are learning can also be accomplished with a pointed brush.

This magnificent "M" of Barbara's is right up my alley. I've enjoyed double stroking letters ever since - years ago - someone shared in a post on Cyberscribes about Martin Jackson's Six Techniques for Calligraphers. Double stroking a letter was one of the six techniques. (I just tried to find that post on Cyberscribes.  It was by Harvest Crittenden in 2005!!)

 Barbara told us a good exercise is to practice letters from very small to very large on lined paper. (Unfortunately, I brought the wrong paper to class, but it was still a good exercise on plain paper.)

 Above, I practiced "Freeing my Hand."

For "Love" I combined some of the double stroking on the "L" 

More in class practice - change of direction on the "G" descender.

I worked on a project this past week where the client had pretty much given me free reign on the design. (Love it when that happens!)  

I enjoyed including some of the things I learned in Barbara's class on the words: something's, about,  to, and take.  

 I also used the opportunity to practice on this past week's "thank you" notes to clients.

 I really enjoyed Barbara's class. We worked through the entire lower case alphabet before lunch and the entire upper case after lunch.  Barbara shared plenty of variations with her students.  Thank you, Barbara! I want to give a special shout-out of thanks to Kathryn Sanchez and Irene Martinez, for going to the office supply store and making copies of Barbara's in-class demonstration pages for their fellow classmates.

The best part of Barbara's class? Sitting next to the pretty, and pretty talented Jody Meese! Miss you, Jody!! (Sorry,  I probably didn't get this posted in time for your morning coffee. haha)

Thank you, all, for visiting.

Go forth and flourish!