Never saying never
Katherine Ross
I never thought I'd actually blog - where will I find the time?! and who cares?! - but here I am, bloggin' away. The reason being is that I'm doing something else I never thought I'd do - teaching a workshop.
There's a major distinction between these two leaps I'm taking - between blogging and teaching. I never thought I'd actually blog because I never gave it much thought at all. I never thought I'd teach a workshop not because I never gave it any thought - I gave it a ton of thought, probably too much thought, I am a crazy person who thinks about calligraphy workshops - but because I didn't think I could.
Genellynne Rivera
Of course I could teach a workshop, as in, make an announcement, find a venue, alert the mailing list I keep of people who've been like, "why don't you teach a workshop already?!" and then there you'd have it - a Script Merchant workshop! But on what? How would I even begin? There's so much to say, and the most important foundation you need to start with is something I don't feel comfortable teaching.
Traditional script. Engrosser's, Copperplate, anything with a pointed nib that takes discipline and foundational strokes and rules, lots of rules. Learning a traditional script first is something I think is so important. You have to learn those rules before you can break them! But while I learned them and practiced them, I never perfected them. Or came even within a mile of perfecting them. And you can't teach what you don't know!
Some early, under-developed Copperplate skills. This? I shouldn't really teach this.
But THIS. I know this! I can teach you how to make it weird, so to speak.