Best products from r/PenmanshipPorn

We found 42 comments on r/PenmanshipPorn discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 188 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

Top comments mentioning products on r/PenmanshipPorn:

u/ElderTheElder · 1 pointr/PenmanshipPorn

Yeah, lots! Some of my old technique books were found in the library of a now-defunct printing school in NYC and thus will be very difficult to find again, but a few good ones that you shouldn't have trouble finding are:

The Universal Penman is a collection of some of George Bickham's most beautiful calligraphic pieces. It's a lovely book for inspiration and general style (not so much technique but rather seeing how the letters are shaped and spaced, etc.).

Spencerian Penmanship is a good technique for learning the basics of Spencerian letterforms. I purchased the version without the five extra copy-books on Amazon but I'm not seeing it there right now (just the version with the copy books, which could be useful).

– JA Cavanaugh's Lettering & Alphabets is a good place to learn the basics of a few different lettering styles, particularly loose script lettering for advertising layouts and some Roman + Caslon styles.

– Leslie Cabarga's Logo, Font, & Lettering Bible has some extremely helpful tips for digitizing your lettering work as well as other general design tips. It is, ironically enough, a horrendously designed and dated book but the methods are still instrumental.

– Finally, Colt Bowden's How To Paint Signs and Influence People zine is a really lovely modern take on lettering techniques. Though it is geared for signwriters, the techniques taught for building up letterforms has followed me through to my pen-and-ink work as well. Plus, it's a really fun little series and your money is going to a very talented and passionate dude.

Hope this was helpful!

u/makingwaves12 · 13 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Thanks! I started out just mimicking photos from Instagram and Pinterest which helped me kind of just get the feel of the nibs.

To practice control, consistency, and flourishing I got these guides:
Inovart Calligraphy Underliners https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005A0IXFY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_.jb8CbP6XV2ED.
You can also make them if you don’t want to purchase them but they are laminated and durable. I also use a little laser pointer from Home Depot to write straight lines. A good way to start is to get vellum/tracing paper and lay it over the guide and practice each letter upper and lowercase over and over until they look the same. You can also purchase letter tracing guides but I’ve never used them. Look up something like “calligraphy letters” to show you all sorts of variations of the alphabet and choose one you’d like to try out.

Videos are helpful and there’s tons on Instagram and YouTube that help give you a visual idea of how to practice. I recommend using the Nikko G nib, which is firm and gives good practice to learn how to create those thin upstrokes and thicker downstrokes with varying pressure on the nib. You can also use the Hunt 101 which is very flexible and easy to use. And the last recommendation is the Brause 361 (or Blue Pumpkin) which is also flexible and holds a good amount of ink. I started out with the Brause and now the Nikko G and Hunt 101 are my faves.
Tip- all nibs come with an oil coating to prevent rust. They won’t hold ink very well until it’s removed. The quickest way is to just run it super quick through a candle or lighter fire.

Hope that helps! If you have any other specific questions, feel free to PM me!

u/MikeVladimirov · 17 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

It's a $70-ish pen. Realistically, that's equivalent to two nights out, if you go to college in a big city. Or, if you're in a rural area, that's three nights out.

When I saw this post, I thought that I'd found the rare college kids that values a relatively obscure hobby enough that he or she makes it a financial priority, and thought it was both endearing and admirable.

But your abrasive comment completely changed my mind!

/s

For what it's worth, I spent all four years of engineering undergrad using a $30 drafting pencil. I used it for another three years after graduation, until the plastic portion of the barrel literally fell apart. I then bought another, identical pencil but for only $10 this time and use it almost daily. That's cheaper than a 12 pack of the standard 0.5mm mechanical pencil, which I guarantee you won't last you a year and, sure as hell, won't last you 7 years.

Assuming you don't get obsessive about it, having good writing tools is much cheaper, in the long run, than buying disposable tools. When you have a quality tool that fits your needs perfectly, you grow to love that tool and, believe me, you won't lose it. It becomes almost like your phone - you always know exactly where it is. And, again trust me, until you've used a writing tool that perfectly fits your needs, you don't realize how much you're missing out on. Writing suddenly becomes a joy and taking notes, completing assignments, or writing essays on exams often ceases to be just an annoying task you have to get out of the way and becomes something you almost look forward to.

No joke, it can really be a life changer.

u/amanwhoknowshowtoski · 3 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

I'm going to use some photos from an earlier comment to illustrate some of my favorite methods and tools. If I'm not fully clear on anything please call me out on it.


Picture 1:

We'll start at the beginning. This is one of the first light paintings I did. Just an LED flashlight pointed at the ground to create parallel lines walking through a field. You can use flashlights as subjects or to light up other subjects. In this picture it's both.

Picture 2:

Building on picture 1. This is a flashlight taped to the end of a translucent plastic tube. What I used for the picture was an empty plotter paper roll and looked very similar to this homemade lightsaber. Strength and type of flashlight will get you different results but this is another way to disperse light and get interesting/unique shapes.

Picture 3:

Two things here:

1.) Light on the ground plane is the plotter paper tube again, this time with a different flashlight. It was weaker, hence the softer edges and gave off a bluer light.

2.) The fiery circle is made by putting fine steel wool (grade 000 or 0000 is what is I usually use) in a whisk, lighting it on fire, and spinning it around on a cord. You can light it using a lighter, 9V battery, or just shoving a lit match into it. It doesn't have to be actually flaming when you start spinning it. As long as there's a spark or two in there it'll work fine. Obviously, THIS IS A FIRE HAZARD, I lit some bits of field on fire the first time I did it. I always try to do it after rain or in paved areas. Also make sure you wear a hood when you spin. Otherwise sparks will fall on your head and will go down your shirt.

Picture 4:

So there's the steel wool again, make orbs by turning slowly in a circle while spinning. The colors on the wall are made using a flash and color gels. These are the ones I think I have but I doubt I paid $20 for them so I'm sure you can find some cheaper somewhere. I had to shoot the a bunch of times with each gel to actually get the color to show, that's all the bright points you can see in between each color.

I was trying to get more out of the star trails on this one but as you can see they're pretty unimpressive. I have yet to figure out a way to get good star trail shots so if you can get it let me know.

Picture 5:

More fire. Fireworks are great subjects. I've found it's easy to overexpose pictures of them though so I usually compensate by shooting them with a low ISO. I believe the ones in this picture are bottle rockets but they might be roman candles. The building itself was lit with a flashlight.

Picture 6

The 'ribbons' on the ground in this picture were made using the same glow stick that I used for the original post. I tied it to the other end of the string I use to spin steel wool and walked back and forth while bouncing it a little. I explained this before as the same motion you would use teasing a cat with a piece of string but I'm still not convinced that's the best metaphor.

Also, try playing with your white balance. It can have a major effect on the overall hue of your photos. Notice how pictures 1, 2, 4, and the original post are very red (especially in the sky) while pictures 3, 5, and 6 have a lot more blue in them? Changing the white balance will let you control how your camera processes (not sure if thats the right word, maybe 'interprets'?) data making it possible contrast or complement the color of whatever tools you're using.

Good luck and have fun!

u/HelenaC9 · 17 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Yeah, I'm doing a degree in Russian and French!

I'd say start by learning the alphabet, it's really important because all the [best] resources you're going to find are going to be partly in cyrillic. We learnt it in two weeks at uni, it's really not that hard if you're consistent about it. It's a really phonetic alphabet, meaning that (generally) one letter = one sound. In fact, for me that makes Russian pronunciation WAY easier than French.

After, I'd probably pick up a good textbook and try to work a bit on it every day. Russian is REALLY different from English, it doesn't have the same grammar rules at all (word order and cases is one of the biggest difference). So it's good if you take it in little by little and just try to do even 30 mins every day. In my course we've been using Colloquial Russian , it's pretty nice and covers all the basic grammar points. Of course, we still get loads of resources from our teachers, but you can find that online or in other books.

Also, duolingo now offers a russian course! If you want to start by taking it really casually and "light" it can be a good option for you. (to type in Cyrillic I just use my on-screen keyboard option and turn it into russian [on windows]).

More importantly, it can seem really overwhelming, but you just gotta remind yourself why you're doing it, and keep going. After a few months you'll be amazed at how much you've improved!

u/rbaltimore · 1 pointr/PenmanshipPorn

You may be surprised to hear this, but MS is not a hereditary disorder. Your family may be like mine, wherein autoimmune disorders, in general, run in the family, but even in my family, even that is questionable. What is significantly more likely to be happening in my family (and maybe yours) has to do with epigenetics. Go down that rabbit hole, it's fascinating. The MS center I go to has been offering my family to graduate medical researchers to study if/how epigenetics has played a role in the autoimmune diseases we all seem to have (especially because we have all spent most of our lives geographically and socio-culturally close to each other.

Mental illness in early hominids or even early H. sapiens is absolutely fascinating to me, though any information we find can only be inferred from things like endocasts, other neuro-structural elements in the fossil record, and from the behavior of mammals and primates, apes in particular. It can also be inferred from mental illnesses that are found to be caused 100% by biology. This book gives a thorough overview of mental illness in animals and the research studies she cites could be looked at in the quest for our own maladies. Other things we look at are mental health disorders that we know to be found in all current human cultures, with evidence in some past cultures. Schizophrenia is a good example.

We have to be careful of culture-specific disorders and disorders that are not considered disorders in other cultures. I'll give you some reading for thins:

This book is not directly about a mental health disorder, but it shows why medical and psychological anthropology is vital to living in a melting pot like the US. I have stories from my mentor, a forensic and bioanthropologist, that are similar.

This book is an absolutely fascinating book that talks about how the mental health framework has been exported all over the world. Again, it's not directly able to talk about mental illness in early hominid species, but I think it important to understand while we are on that search.

Hopefully those books will help you with your questions, at least until more fossil evidence is found, since endocasts are not just popping up everyday!

u/TheFallenKnight · 58 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

The two main groups of penmanship styles are Palmer and Spencierian. You can buy workbooks for both off of Amazon. Personally Spencierian is easier for me, but realize both are technically "cursive." Which I rarely use.

The book that I instead learned from was Lettering for Architects & Desginers. I realized that I always wanted my print writing to look like my mother's. She learned how to write in a drafting class. I did some research and that was the book that I found.

The 3 tips that I took to heart from my time learning Spencierian script were:

  1. Slow down.: Seriously. If you do nothing else just slowing down will help a lot.
  2. Think through every stroke. You need to make sure you have enough room to complete every letter and that all of your letters are roughly the same scale.
  3. Practice everyday. Instead of writing "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" over and over again I copied famous passages and poems. Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, the lyrics to Aerosmith songs. Pick something that interests you and use that.

    Hope this helps.
u/terribleatkaraoke · 3 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Glad you like! It's a good pen, although I wrapped mine in masking tape to make the handling better. You don't have to do that. I recommend these books, or this for more in depth and fancier style. Also consider joining us at /r/calligraphy for critique and learning :)

u/loriffic · 2 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Haha, I should have said is there an ECO in here. TSWBI ECO. Brilliant pen! And thank you for the kind compliment.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EINFPNQ

u/kierkkadon · 2 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

I would recommend not getting a fountain pen, because it would be expensive to get one with the flexible nib necessary to have variable-breadth strokes like in the OP.

Just get a starter set of nibs and a nib holder like this Speedball set for $10, find a tutorial for pointed-pen scripts like Engrosser's or any of the scripts mentioned in this video.

Oh, you'll also need some ink. India ink or walnut ink both work fine.

u/made_by_edgar · 47 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Thank you 🤠 and I bought these exact calligraphy pens it was the best investment I made, I would definitely recommend them

u/gabedamien · 3 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Welcome to the hobby! Some perspective:

  1. Newbies focus on the tools ("I need a calligraphy pen!")
  2. Amateurs focus on the letterforms ("I need to know the proper strokes and construction")
  3. Intermediates focus on regularity ("My spacing and angles need to be perfect")

    …I cannot claim to know what comes next as I'm not sure I have much claim to anything beyond amateur. But here are some especially nice books on the subject I have found helpful:

u/ONE_MAN_MILITIA · 9 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

I loved this set to learn with, thought you'd appreciate
Spencerian Penmanship (Theory Book plus five copybooks) https://www.amazon.com/dp/088062096X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_k4dLAbNN3JY0M

u/thisisbelinda · 5 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Fountain pen ink is runnier than calligraphy ink. India ink is good for beginners - you really don't need anything fancy. You can try Speedball India Ink. This one from Winsor and Newton is fine too and a bit cheaper.

You can also check JetPens for more options - their prices seem to be cheaper than Amazon.

u/Chevron · 59 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

Looks to me a lot like the Tombow brush pens I like to use for this style of brush calligraphy.

u/Dw1ggle · 1 pointr/PenmanshipPorn

Happy Cakeday! Also here's the answer to this most one

Uni-Ball Signo UM-153 Gel Ink Rollerball Pen, 1.0mm, Broad Point, Black Ink, Pack of 6 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OACPHHK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_uYFDCbN32R0PV

u/MirKvant · 2 pointsr/PenmanshipPorn

I'm not at work, so I can't tell you which exactly, but it's a computation book. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Ampad-Computation-Ruled-Sheets-22-157/dp/B000DZEA2G

u/bkogut81 · 1 pointr/PenmanshipPorn

Thank you. The first one is with a Sharpie brush pen.

Everything else is Tombow Fudenosuke soft and hard tips