Now that October is here, we can start to enjoy the Halloween season! You can get into the spirit with TPK’s signature Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills: Spooky Edition. There’s a Procreate version available as of today!
I love making themed calligraphy drills sheets, so I planned and put together some “Spooky Drills” last autumn! The only problem? My memory of making these drills is about as foggy as a dark and stormy night at a haunted mansion. The drills sheet was my creative outlet after becoming a mother in mid-September, and those early new-parent days can be pretty intense!
I haven’t looked at the Spooky Drills in a year, and I decided to return to them earlier this week to test out a new nib. Now that there’s a chill in the air, it only seemed appropriate to practice my pen control with “spooky” creations! After working through the drills, I have to say: I love. these. exercises! Dually, I decided to make them available in a Procreate-friendly format and give them a proper, non-newborn-fog introduction in today’s blog post. 🙂
Here is the recipe for your perfect spooky practice session: the Spooky Drills worksheet set, sumi ink, your favorite nib (if you are a beginner, I recommend the Nikko G nib), and a comfortable pen (straight or oblique). For a bonus, have Hocus Pocus playing in the background and keep a cup of warm apple cider at hand!
The point of all TPK Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills is to challenge your penmanship in an artistic, innovative, and useful way. You create something recognizable for each drill, whether it’s “Dracula’s coffin” or a wide-eyed mummy! As you write, you’ll practice pen control, pressure exertion, and common strokes.
After eight pages of casual practice, you’ll move on to the “big leagues”: a flourished hissing cat and a vampire bat! These larger drills double as practice and artwork that you can incorporate into Halloween projects like mail art, greeting cards, or artwork for your home.
The drills conclude with the pièce de résistance: a flourished skull. Like the cat and the bat, the skull can be incorporated into “real life” Halloween projects!
Pen and ink is great, but sometimes it doesn’t quite fit into your lifestyle! If you prefer to practice calligraphy drills on your iPad, try the newly-released Procreate edition of these drills.
The layout of the Procreate worksheet is the same as the original worksheet. Basically, once you purchase the product, you’re presented with a .zip file containing 17 .jpg images. Import those .jpgs into Procreate (as per the Welcome to Procreate FAQs), then you can get to writing!
I have four tips for a successful Procreate practice experience:
The Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills: Spooky Edition packet has been in the TPK Catalog since its release in October of last year. This year, though, I think it makes more sense to turn this product into a seasonal one. Dually, both the printable and the Procreate versions of this worksheet will disappear from the catalog on November 1st. (Fear not, though: like the Loch Ness Monster, it will appear again! Look for it on October 1st, 2020!)
I hope that this blog post serves to give you a little bit more information about one of TPK’s coolest printables! When I created these calligraphy drills last year, they got a quieter release than they deserved. That’s mainly due to the fact that I was dealing with the scariest drill of all: practicing how to take care of an infant! Now that my little monster is a bit more tame, I’m seeing these drills with new eyes and loving their playfulness and creativity. You can snag your copy of the printable drills here or the Procreate drills here!
Thanks so much for reading TPK, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Have a great week, and we’ll reconvene this weekend with another post. 🙂
Warmly,
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