Welcome to the beautiful world of pointed pen calligraphy flourishing! In today’s article, we will delve into the art of adding embellishments to your work. Get ready for an inspiring journey filled with tips, inspirational photos, and a free worksheet to help you get hooked on flourishing.
The other day, I received a marketing email from a company trying to sell me their electronic envelope addressing services. “Stop hand-addressing invitation envelopes!” it said. “The latest envelope printing technology lets you print handwritten quality envelopes at speeds of up to 5,000 envelopes per hour.” Despite the marketing claim, I don’t think that printed envelopes can truly reach “handwritten quality”. Why? Well, besides the small but appealing imperfections that hand-written calligraphy can produce, there’s flourishing.
Pointed pen calligraphy flourishes will add personality to any project, and they can’t successfully be replicated with a computer font. Yes, there are some fonts that try, but the appeal of flourishing lies in its inconsistency. Flourishes are uniquely suited to the word you’re writing and the space you have to write that word in. There’s no specific formula for flourishes — instead, you’ll need to use your imagination and creativity. Today, I’m going to do my best to set you up to create gorgeous flourishes by providing you with tips, inspiration photos, and a list of resources!
Calligraphy flourishing occurs when you take what would otherwise be a plain word or phrase, and you add embellishments to it. For example, the phrase below — a simple quote — is elevated to a work of art with its lavish loops and strokes.
You can add flourishing anywhere in your calligraphy; be it around letters or connected to letters.
As far as flourishing that is connected to letters, I usually connect flourishes in four different places:
Flourishes can also exist as standalone artwork. The calligraphy medallion shown below is comprised completely of lovely pointed pen calligraphy flourishes.
There’s no formula for flourishing. It’s completely up to you how you flourish and where! However, it never hurts to get in some practice and maintain a mental library of flourishes. For that reason, I made a free calligraphy flourishing worksheet for you to use. It will walk you through basic calligraphy flourishes and give you a few flourishing ideas.
DOWNLOAD THE FREE FLOURISHING WORKSHEET
There are several resources here on TPK that will help with your calligraphy flourishing. If you understand the basics of pointed pen calligraphy, consider the Intermediate Modern Calligraphy Online Course and/or Flourish With Me: A Pointed Pen Calligraphy Online Course. Both of those courses will hone your flourishing abilities and give you the valuable practice needed to develop your own fabulous flourishing skills!
ENROLL IN THE INTERMEDIATE MODERN CALLIGRAPHY ONLINE COURSE
Your calligraphy flourishing will also improve by filling out any of the Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills (NYACD) packets. In addition to several small to medium-sized flourishing exercises, each NYACD packet includes a large flourished project like the hummingbird shown below.
There are also several free tutorials here on TPK that you can use to sharpen your skills! They include:
There are some calligraphers out there that make glorious flourishes that go on for miles!
I have to admit that I’m not as savvy as I should be about the great flourishers out there, so I know I’m missing some. Other exceptional flourishers who come to mind include Jake Weidmann, Maureen Vickery, and Kathy Milici! Can you think of someone else? Please contribute their name and a link to their work in the comments section!
I like the Brause EF66 and the Brause Rose nibs for flourishing. Both nibs are capable of creating wonderful stroke contrast! As far as ink goes, I prefer to flourish with iron gall ink. Iron gall ink is watery, meaning that it’s capable of creating nice, thin upstrokes — great for flourishes! That said, any ink will work. I created the bold envelope below with sumi ink, and I do flourish a lot with white ink, which is quite thick.
The last thing I want to leave you with is the idea that calligraphy flourishing can benefit any lettering! Take this Sans Serif block lettering, for instance:
If you have a word like this, you’ll first want to identify the possible letters you can connect to. What stands out to me the most here is the right side of the “V”, which benefits from the addition of some loops.
Next, the tail of the “R” is ripe for flourishing.
The “N” has two opportunities for adding embellishments: the top and the bottom.
Finally, if you are flourishing a word with some personality to it, you can add graphic elements that communicate an idea. I have drawn in some small pine trees to reinforce Denver’s ties to the outdoors/mountains:
I’m a firm believer in “a little bit of flourish never hurt anyone”. You can add flourishing to anything you are creating calligraphy on, from envelopes to place cards to art prints! Flourishes are wonderful in that they can convey playfulness, elegance, or both. If you have any questions about flourishing, please feel free to comment. It is always great to hear from you! Thanks very much for reading TPK; and I hope that you enjoy the free flourishing worksheet!
Warmly,
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