Li Ward photographer of pets and weddings. Fat Orange Cat Studio is a fresh and candid boutique photography service in Boston, Massachusetts.

I love pens. I love paper. I doodle non-stop. Dan yells at me because I’ll absently doodle on bills if it and a pen are within reach. Even with Google docs or Google calendar or whatever electronic tools that are available out there to keep organized, I still keep a very paper-based system of note-taking, just so I can write.

I’ve always wanted to try calligraphy ever since jr. high but like so many other interests I thought I had, I never got past just dabbling here and there. Same with photography. A steady attention span has never been my forte. I’ve been dabbling with photography forever it seems, and it was only a couple of years ago that I decided to step it up. So I’ve decided I’d like to step up my calligraphy skills as well, and quit saying it’s something I would like to do without doing it. I really don’t have any skills to begin with, aside from a penchant to just scribble.

I’ve had this pen, nib and ink set that I got eons ago in Florence, Italy. I used it the other day for the very first time. I love the way the ink smells, like moist soil in a dark forest, the noise the nib makes as it scratches across the paper’s surface, how the ink sprays if I bear down too hard. And how much the whole process hurts my hand.

This is a work in progress! So far I like writing S’s and lower case f’s the best. I am horrible at lower case a’s and n’s. Lots to practice, but I’m so enjoying the process.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 11:06 am and is filed under Calligraphy, FOCStudio Business, Personal, Things I Like. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.