About
This is my new blog, where I hope to keep visitors up to date with all my calligraphy-related thoughts, experiences and discoveries.
Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions and constructive criticism. The frequency of my posts will depend on how interesting my daily calligraphic life is (hah!), but I’ll hopefully be able to make reasonably regular updates.
Time will tell!
Thank you for visiting.
Duncan Tolmie
Wishful Inking 
I’m enjoying your blog. I’m working on a book about American Calligraphy now, and appreciate comparing it to scripts from the Old World….
You give a lot of good insights. But watch out for those Parallel pens; they snag on the upstroke! Too many surprises.
This such a fun blog — I’m from Canada, but wish I was taking a course from you! I wanted to know what someone thought of parallell pens; the lemon yellow wasn’t that color. Do you know why? And yes, practise takes perfect. I didn’t know that there was an art form of parallel calligraphy. Thanks. Teresa
Calligraphy means “beautiful writing” (?) but writing is hard to come by these days. Look about you at those whom you may see writing; they can’t even hold a pen correctly. How about ‘a School for Penholding’? Tom Gourdie was a mentor of mine who became a close personal friend. I have many letters he wrote to me, in his skillful hand. Do you perhaps know of Tom Gourdies son, Tom ; Anyone writing a book about Tom Gourdie who was one of the world’s foremost teachers of handwriting? Best Wishes, Cecil Renfield.
What a wonderful blog! I came across it trying to find a class in Edinburgh- I agree completely that hands-on, visual teaching from a good teacher saves hours of frustration and avoidance of bad habits. I don’t suppose you know anyone in Edinburgh who could teach? All the classes seem to be Chinese brush work which is very nice but not what I need to learn. 😀
Hi Katherine
I apologise for the delay in responding.
To be honest, I don’t know of any calligraphy classes in Edinburgh, and their absence is both surprising and disappointing. You’re not the first to ask me about Edinburgh classes, and I’ve even had students travel from Edinburgh to attend my Glasgow classes, which definitely shouldn’t be necessary.
All I can suggest is that you contact your local council for information, or use Google to do a search (although I’m sure you’ve already tried that).
I’m sorry that I can’t be more helpful, and I hope you eventually manage to find a suitable local calligraphy class.
Thanks for getting in touch,
Duncan