Calligraphy Flourish Friday - Fraktur Caps

Following is a reposting of my November 13, 2009 Flourish Friday.  I love ornamental Fraktur capitals, and my recent workshop with Reggie Ezell has given me even more ideas...

To view the comments from the original post CLICK HERE.

For this week's Flourish Friday, I tried my hand at Ornamental Fraktur. Believe it or not, this is the letter A.

I used some blue ink that was packaged with the pen my husband bought me in Venice. (You can see that glass pen in an earlier post here.)

I used my 6mm Pilot Parallel Pen. I filled a spent cartridge with a Monojet syringe. I like the Parallel Pen for practice. It is easier for me to get consistent thins from this tool than it is from a broad edge dip pen.

My reference was chapter 6 from Bill Hildebrandt's wonderful book "Calligraphic Flourishing." Some Flourish Friday I'll have to show you the Whopperplate I bought from Bill! :-)

I hope you're all Flourishing out there! Have a great weekend!!

Ornamental Fraktur - Flourish Friday

While waiting for some client work to dry, I decided to give Ornamental Fraktur another go.  Two and a half hours later the client's piece was ready for the next stage, but I was still playing! 

iFriend Deborah asked me if Dr. Martin's Bleedproof White works in a parallel pen.  I hadn't tried it before, but I didn't see why it wouldn't work.  So today's Flourish Friday shows ProWhite (which is similar to Dr. Martin's) loaded into the barrel of a 1.5mm Pilot Parallel Pen (PPP).  I bought a jar of ProWhite after hearing several calligraphers say they like it better than Dr. Martin's. I tried it, but just couldn't get the consistency right. I much prefer Dr. Martin's.  I hate to waste anything, so I'm happy that the ProWhite works well in the PPP.  I did keep a little jar of water nearby to dip the tip of the PPP in every once in awhile to keep the ProWhite flowing.

To read my post about loading the barrel of a PPP, click here.

To see more Ornamental Fraktur play click here and here.