Steve Husting's Calligraphy

I have two 3-ring binders of material that I had printed out over time and assembled. When I see an inspirational calligraphic work on the Internet, I save the image to my hard drive in a particular folder for that purpose. After I get enough of them, I open Word and past similar images together. I print those out and place them with like subjects. For instance, Copperplate and handwriting material are grouped together with a divider.

3-ring binders, dividers

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These are different kinds of mistakes I’ve seen in myself and others over the years with calligraphy work. Do you see yourself in these areas? In what areas can you work for improvement?

• Jumping right into an important project instead of taking the time to warm up with the lettering and flourishes first, to get into the flow and rhythm, a steady hand.
• To keep on lettering instead of cleaning the pen every few lines. As a result, the strokes are uneven.
• Failure to practice new lettering types with appropriate guidelines and slant lines.
• Forgetting to protect the writing surface from spills, drips, and human oils. Continue reading →

Inside pages of my Spiritual Calligraphy devotional book

Here are the steps I followed to self-publish my book, Spiritual Calligraphy, on lulu.com in 2013. I went the POD way: Print On Demand. What this means is that I created the pages and cover artwork of the book, uploaded the documents to lulu.com, typed in the information for the book and store, told lulu.com how I want my royalties, and it is all set. A visitor to your storefront of lulu.com will see the book information, scan a few pages of the book, and purchase the book online. Lulu then prints the book and packs and ships it to the buyer, taking care of the credit card transaction for you, and depositing your money where you want it. The customer can order a physical copy of the book or a PDF version for mobile reading.

The cool thing is that I don’t have boxes and boxes of my books stacked around my mobile home. They are not even printed until someone orders a copy! I can also order a few to keep one on had to show others or give away as gifts. It does not cost you anything to create an account and upload your book. Lulu will take a chunk of the price of the ordered books and you’ll take whatever you set as your royalties. So that’s an overview of the benefits of going POD. Continue reading →

I made a Whopperplate.

Out of cardboard, tape, glue, and two pencils.

Yep:

Cardboard whopperplate, top

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Barbara Close gave her class the homework project of creating an accordion book with our calligraphy on the inside. Once again I was faced with filling a blank sheet of paper. After talking to my architect brother about the project, the ideas began flying, and I thought I would cut holes in the pages and outside edges. (This was one day before the project was due.) That evening I went to work, measuring out all the cutouts first, then making the tracks the lettering will follow, then drawing the letters in pencil. The final paper size was 30″ x 5″, with six 5″ squares.

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After I saw several small calligraphy pieces in a Boston bookstore, I was challenged to do my own “small” piece using a Brause 1mm nib. The result is this famous poem rendition in Uncial.

Each letter is only 1/8″ high, not including the ascenders or descenders. It is only four inches from the top line of text to the bottom of the last line of text.