It is important to take care of calligraphy and illustrating equipment. Brushes can last a very long time if they are of a high quality and are cared for properly. If neglected, brushes quickly lose their shape.The most common cause of a brush no longer pointing is the build-up of paint particles in the base of the brush and ferrule. A build-up of pigment pushes the hairs apart and prevents the point from forming.

Cleaning BrushesAlways clean brushes immediately after use and before they have the chance to dry out.Wipe the excess paint off a brush with a lint-free rag.Then rinse the brush under running water. Brushes can be cleaned with cool water and mild soap. Gently swirl the soapy brush in the palm of your hand. Now rinse the brush. With a larger size brush you can very gently rub the brush with your finger and thumb to help rinse the bristles.Repeat washing and rinsing the brush until the soap and water run clear. Make sure that the base of the brush head is clean. Some pigments may stain the hairs slightly, but this will not affect the performance or the life of the brush.Finally, gently reshape the head and dry the handle and ferrule and stand head up to allow the hair to dry.

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	Firmly push the cartridge into frontend.
	Load a second cartridge into the barrel.
	Screw the barrel to the Frontend.
	The pen is now ready.
	Gently tap your pen on surface to start the flow.

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Once the nib has been prepared it is important to set it up correctly.  Some nibs are purchased with a reservoir, but reservoirs for the William Mitchell Square Cut nibs and Leonardt Square Cut Nibs are purchased separately and have to be fitted to the nib.  These reservoirs are usually made of brass making them flexible enough so they can be adjusted.  It is important to fit the reservoir correctly otherwise it can cause problems. If the reservoir is fitted too tight it can affect the tines of the nib causing scratchy pen strokes.   If it is fitted too loosely it will fall off (I’ve lost several down the sink or in the bottle of ink!).  The fit needs to be such that the reservoir stays on the nib but could quite easily fall off.The reservoir can be adjusted by using both thumbs to adjust the little wings that wrap round the nib.

It is usual that each time you fit a reservoir you will need to adjust it for the nib.  Now the reservoir fits the nib correctly you need to make sure the tip of the reservoir is just touching the nib.  Often it is necessary to bend the point of the reservoir a little.

Once the reservoir has been attached to the nib you will see a gap between the reservoir and nib.   The tip of the reservoir should be touching the nib.

Now the reservoir needs to be positioned correctly on the back of the nib. The position of the reservoir will control the ink flow.Start with the reservoir about 2mm away from the tip of the nib. If the ink does not flow very well, slide the reservoir a little closer to the edge of the nib. If the ink flow is too great, reduce the flow by sliding the reservoir away from the nib.

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There has already been a post on this blog about preparing nibs before you start to use them. Using a new nib frequently causes problems. Only the other day I spoke to a customer who was experiencing difficulties try to get the ink flow from a new nib. After a chat they followed the instructions on the preparing a nib post and later emailed back and said it worked.Another method of preparing a nib is to use a naked flame. With this method, the nib is passed back and forth through a naked flame. I have tried this method and the results seem to be the same as using boiling water, so I have always stuck with that. However, the following email extracts prove it can be worth trying different ways.Back in May, a customer contacted us with the ink flow problem. Attached to their email was some photographs that clearly showed the problem.“I am attaching these pictures to illustrate my problem with this nib.You sent me a Leonardt 33 nib. But, as you can see I can’t seem to write a single word.I have ink on the nib but no flow at all. What am I not doing wrong? Any suggestion would be helpful.”As the first photograph clearly shows, the ink was just sitting on the nib. You can see the tip of the nib is still dry. So we recommended the boiling water method. The following day we received an update.“Unfortunately , it is not working for me. The nib cannot write at all.. despite the soaking.”We then suggested the flame method. A couple of days later we receive another email and photograph. It had worked.What I had learnt from this was that it is worth trying different methods on the same nib. Just because once in the past the flame method had been tried and the result had not appeared to be any different to the boiling water method I had not used it since. However, if one method does not work, try another.

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We recently discussed ways of practising your calligraphy. In that post we said it is best to practise frequently and do so in a constructive and methodical way. By setting yourself a target for the practise session you would be more focused and achieve better results.I thought I would follow this up by describing the way I practised Italic Minuscules. I don’t intend to explain how to write that style rather than my approach to practising the style.The characteristics of Italics are different to those of Roman Capitals and Foundational Hand.The nib is held at 45° to the write-line. So, I constructed a 45° line at the top left on my practise paper (I like to use Layout Paper). Next I ruled up the paper. It’s best to write large at first and at a later stage reduce the x-height. So I started with an x-height of about 15mm. The letters are also sloped at 5°, so I constructed a 5° line and then copied it across the page at 20mm intervals.I was ready to begin; after loading the nib with ink, I hovered it over the 45° line to make sure the pen angle was correct. From experience I find that each practise session starts of badly – it takes a while to warm up. Then for a while you write at your best before starting to become tired and the letters become weaker. So at first I produce a few vertical and horizontal lines to get myself in the right frame of mind and to check the ink flow. It is important the nib is correctly inserted in to the penholder and the ink is flowing nicely. When practising, you do not want to be distracted with any nib and ink flow problems.At this stage, the paper is ruled-up ready including your 5° slope lines and 45° pen angle line. Your nib and reservoir are correctly fitted and the ink is flowing nicely from nib. We are now ready to start writing …..Italic Minuscules can be grouped together based upon similar characteristics. In this practise session I had already decided to practise the ‘O’ group of letters. It is difficult to get the consistency of these letters because they are all based on the oval shape. Getting the shape is not so bad, but to get the same width oval shape is hard. In contrast to this if you were studying Roman Capitals or the Foundational Hand you may be finding it really hard to get a perfect round circle, but at least you can visualise the shape. Visualising the correct width of the oval is a lot trickier.Now warmed up and ready to go, I started by writing out a line of the letters c, e, o, l and t to get going. Next a complete line of the o letter was written. Then I looked carefully at my letters comparing them to the alphabet sampler and accompanying notes. Each letter was analysed and if I thought it was acceptable I placed a small tick next to the letter. If the letter was bad a small cross was made against it. At first there would be whole lines of letters with a cross against each of them. Several lines later a few more ticks started to appear.This technique was then used with the other letters of the group.Towards the end of the session I produced a couple of lines writing each letter of the group in turn.By analysing and marking EACH letter written, quite quickly I found my work would improve. This method was used for each group of letters.Finally, It’s a good idea to date your work and keep all the practise sheets for a while so at a later date you can go back through them and see how much progress you have made.

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Learning calligraphy is a bit like learning to play an instrument. You will only achieve results through practise.What is the best way to practise? Well, everybody has their preferred method. It’s a bit like revising for an exam.Set a side time for practising your calligraphy – Firstly, do not sit down and practise for hours at a time. Frequent sessions are better than the odd long practise.Before you start your practise think about what you want to achieve. It is far more productive to have an objective for the session; otherwise, you can easily end up writing loads but not really improving. Objectives for a practise could be; maintain a consistent pen angle, produce consistent straight vertical and horizontal pen strokes.Once you have a good control of the pen you can then start practising the letters. With many styles of writing, letters can be grouped according to their characteristics. It is best to practise a group of letters in one session and a different group another time rather than writing out each letter of the alphabet.If in one session you can see an improvement in one are you will be more satisfied with your progress. If you feel you are making progress you we will become more motivated and will want to practise moreProgress = motivation = progress

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The William Mitchell Round Hand Nibs are amongst the most popular edged nibs used by calligraphers. But the nib sizes are not so popular. Unlike the Brause Bandzug nibs and others, they do not have any measurements to indicate their size in millimetres. Instead they are assigned a number. Size ’0′ is the largest and size ’6′ the smallest. Even this is confusing as size 6 sounds like it should be larger than the size 0. It’s a shame the numbers on the William Mitchell (and Leonardt Round Hand nibs) do not relate to their actual width.Below is a chart giving the size of each nib in millimetres. These sizes are also the same for the Leonardt Round Hand Nibs

* Inch sizes have been rounded and shown as fractions of an Inch rather than a decimal value. This rounding has given the anomaly of some nibs being the same size.Accurately ruling-up some of the smaller nibs sizes can be very tricky. For example, 5 nib widths of a Number 6 nib is 2.5mm or 3/32”. This problem resulted in the development of the X-Height Measuring Discs

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Gaynor Goffe is a well-known professional calligrapher with 30 years experience teaching calligraphy, from beginners to degree level. She has taught widely, including in Japan, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and throughout the U.K., and has taught many people who have gone on to become recognized in the field. She works to commission and for exhibition and has many years experience of setting up and tutoring correspondence courses.Gaynor has kindly agreed to run a question and answer session, here on our blog. So this is your chance to ask a professional scribe a question.We shall pass on your questions to Gaynor and post her response here. Perhaps you would like to ask about inks, favourite type of nib or the best way to practice your lettering? – It’s over to you.closing deadline: 1st November 2009

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To ensure reliable ink flow, it is important to keep your calligraphy pen clean. Dip pens and nibs should be cleaned after each use. The easiest way to do this is to simply rinse the pen in running cold or warm water. Be careful not to loose the reservoirs down the plug hole! – I know Sometimes an old brush can be useful to help clean nibs and dip pens.Nibs and reservoirs must be dry before storing them. You can dry them using a sheet of kitchen roll. Lay the nibs and reservoirs at one end of kitchen roll sheet, and then fold the other end over the nibs. Finally gently squeeze the folded up sheet between your hands. It may be necessary to repeat to make sure everything is dry.If you clean your nib whilst it is still in the penholder you need to be careful not to get the metal ferrule wet as it will soon rust. This then makes it much harder to insert and remove the nib.

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You can blend the Zig Calligraphy Pens to achieve a range of effects.This is achieved by wiping one colour on to another. However, the effect can last, meaning it can take a long time before only the original colour comes through.
A nice flower effect can be simply produced using The Zig Calligraphy Pens. Firstly, two colours are blended. Next each petal is produced by writing an ‘S’ shape on the paper. The paper is then rotated before the next petal is drawn.

Download the information sheet for more information

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