Modern Calligraphy with Lulu Lucky and Blog Society

I remember when I was young getting a calligraphy set for Christmas, I am not sure what came of that set but needless to say I did not become a master calligrapher that year.   

Roll on 25+ years and the desire to learn calligraphy was still very much with me. To say I was excited when scrolling through Instagram and a post from the wonderful Blog Society announcing modern calligraphy classes with Lulu Lucky popped up in my feed!!  I was all over it and signed up straight away despite the fact it was up in Sydney. A week or so later a follow up post announcing another class, this time in Melbourne had me in a fluster emailing Jaclyn founder of Blog Society asking if I could switch.  A little reorganising and I got into the Melbourne class thankfully.   

Roll on to two weeks ago and I made my way to the Pop and Scott  workshop space in Northcote, Melbourne. Just walking into the studio, I knew it was going to be a good day. With Melbourne weather turning on its charm, the ladies had the fire stoked and our workspace decorated beautifully with fresh flowers and lovely finishing touches. Such a great contrast to the raw workspace we were in.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Sitting down at the heavy wooden table, a brown box tied with a grosgrain ribbon awaited us! I almost didn't want to open it! You have to understand, to someone like me who revels in ribbons and packaging this is heaven! Diving into our boxes, Kara (aka LuluLucky) talked us through the bits and bobs. A cute little clipboard contained all the essential information to get started, a thick pad of paper full of possibilities, all the writing implements and the all important lettering guide.

Boxes await us! 

Lovely box of loot! 

We started by tracing the letter guide with pencil to get comfortable with the letter forms and the flow of the strokes of each letter. Harder than it sounds, it was very different to my normal writing style and was way harder than it looked. We hadn't even gotten to the ink part yet! 

Concentrating hard on tracing

A welcome break for lunch....such intense concentration makes you hungry you know! A yummy spread was provided and allowed us all to have a chat and discuss our successes and failures for the morning. Fed and hydrated we launched into the ink and nib! Oh my its really hard, not helped by the fact that I thought I was going to be a natural.

Ink practice... 

Kara assured us it can take a while and to just keep practicing until you find your style. Some of the class really were naturals, which did not help my cause. I will say though that sometimes it is the imperfections that make it great. In a world of technology, little ink splatters and wobbly lines gives it that handmade quality. That's what I say anyway.

Sadly, the class was drawing to a close and the room was full of the chatter of a room full of people now hooked on the art of modern calligraphy. I want to say thank you  to both Kara of Lulu Lucky for being so encouraging and of course to Jaclyn from Blog Society for bringing together a fantastic class! I cannot think of a better way to spend an afternoon.

I am practicing like a demon at home and getting slightly better and I think even finding a style of sorts.

Getting some style....of sorts!