Posts Tagged ‘blackwing’

Post-Pinners Class Recap

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Last weekend I spent all day Friday and Saturday at Pinners Conference. This year it was in Downtown Salt Lake; so it was bigger, louder, crazier and better. I think it was about double the size of last year’s conference. Just nuts.

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I was asked to teach a calligraphy class for the conference. The limitations being that I need to do something in 1 hour for 175-ish people. Considering that most of my regular workshops are 3 hours and we only cover the lowercase alphabet, that’s just crazy talk. So I opted for pencil calligraphy. It takes away the complication of the moving parts of pointed pen, and isn’t as permanent as brush work since you have an eraser.

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Blackwing and The Papermill Store donated materials for the class. Top-notch materials to boot!

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I use The Papermill Store’s Fidelity Onion Skin paper on most of my practice. Even things that I photograph. It’s smooth for brush practice and high-quality for ink work. I use it regularly for digitizing my calligraphy as I can place my guidelines underneath. I don’t have to worry about photoshopping out guidelines as they’re completely separate! It’s a fabulous paper and handles printing well, too.

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Blackwing donated their Palomino Pearl pencils. They’re smooth like a 2-4b, but the lead keeps its shape like an HB. A beautiful compromise if you ask me. And the eraser? It’s adjustable. Absolutely fantastic.

Here you can see the pencil in action.

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In the workshop we covered orientation, grip, touch, angle, basic strokes and the lowercase alphabet. It was like the Melissa-Tornado came through, we covered so much ground! But that was just the beginning! I feel like all workshops are much too short!! I could talk and talk and talk about materials, orientation and foundations for hours on end. But thankfully for everyone in attendance, I ended on time.

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Here’s a glimpse of the 175 Pinners in attendance. Biggest class to date!

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One woman came up to me after class to show me her practice. She had never done calligraphy before, and look at this great practice! Proud moment here.

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We also ran a booth this weekend there, I sold markers, watercolors, pens & paper. I found these most adorable pens and stickers and couldn’t not stock them. I’m thinking I need to sell grab bags of the left-over goodies.

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It was a great weekend, but so exhausting! I’m glad to be home and tidying up my studio. It’s a hurricane, you’ll agree if you’ve seen my Insta story on it.

If you missed out on the Pinners class, I’ll be teaching two workshops in the next month. Sign up for my pointed pen workshop here and the brush workshop here. And if not, there’s always one of my online classes here!!

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