(Part 3) Top products from r/PenmanshipPorn

Yeah, lots! Some of my old technique books were found in the library of a now-defunct printing school in NYC and thus will be very difficult to find again, but a few good ones that you shouldn't have trouble finding are:

– The Universal Penman is a collection of some of George Bickham's most beautiful calligraphic pieces. It's a lovely book for inspiration and general style (not so much technique but rather seeing how the letters are shaped and spaced, etc.).

– Spencerian Penmanship is a good technique for learning the basics of Spencerian letterforms. I purchased the version without the five extra copy-books on Amazon but I'm not seeing it there right now (just the version with the copy books, which could be useful).

– JA Cavanaugh's Lettering & Alphabets is a good place to learn the basics of a few different lettering styles, particularly loose script lettering for advertising layouts and some Roman + Caslon styles.

– Leslie Cabarga's Logo, Font, & Lettering Bible has some extremely helpful tips for digitizing your lettering work as well as other general design tips. It is, ironically enough, a horrendously designed and dated book but the methods are still instrumental.

– Finally, Colt Bowden's How To Paint Signs and Influence People zine is a really lovely modern take on lettering techniques. Though it is geared for signwriters, the techniques taught for building up letterforms has followed me through to my pen-and-ink work as well. Plus, it's a really fun little series and your money is going to a very talented and passionate dude.

Hope this was helpful!

You may be surprised to hear this, but MS is not a hereditary disorder. Your family may be like mine, wherein autoimmune disorders, in general, run in the family, but even in my family, even that is questionable. What is significantly more likely to be happening in my family (and maybe yours) has to do with epigenetics. Go down that rabbit hole, it's fascinating. The MS center I go to has been offering my family to graduate medical researchers to study if/how epigenetics has played a role in the autoimmune diseases we all seem to have (especially because we have all spent most of our lives geographically and socio-culturally close to each other.

Mental illness in early hominids or even early H. sapiens is absolutely fascinating to me, though any information we find can only be inferred from things like endocasts, other neuro-structural elements in the fossil record, and from the behavior of mammals and primates, apes in particular. It can also be inferred from mental illnesses that are found to be caused 100% by biology. This book gives a thorough overview of mental illness in animals and the research studies she cites could be looked at in the quest for our own maladies. Other things we look at are mental health disorders that we know to be found in all current human cultures, with evidence in some past cultures. Schizophrenia is a good example.

We have to be careful of culture-specific disorders and disorders that are not considered disorders in other cultures. I'll give you some reading for thins:

This book is not directly about a mental health disorder, but it shows why medical and psychological anthropology is vital to living in a melting pot like the US. I have stories from my mentor, a forensic and bioanthropologist, that are similar.

This book is an absolutely fascinating book that talks about how the mental health framework has been exported all over the world. Again, it's not directly able to talk about mental illness in early hominid species, but I think it important to understand while we are on that search.

Hopefully those books will help you with your questions, at least until more fossil evidence is found, since endocasts are not just popping up everyday!

I felt the exact same when I was an almost-13-year-old! I've always loved cursive and calligraphy. My 8th grade English teacher used to assign handwritten journal entries every week for our reading logs (do you still do reading logs?)

Anyways, I taught myself cursive and used the entries as practice. I haven't gone back since! If you ever want to teach yourself, look into getting a cursive workbook from Amazon! They're super inexpensive. Here's their best seller if you're interested.

And your handwriting is great btw :)

The two main groups of penmanship styles are Palmer and Spencierian. You can buy workbooks for both off of Amazon. Personally Spencierian is easier for me, but realize both are technically "cursive." Which I rarely use.

The book that I instead learned from was Lettering for Architects & Desginers. I realized that I always wanted my print writing to look like my mother's. She learned how to write in a drafting class. I did some research and that was the book that I found.

The 3 tips that I took to heart from my time learning Spencierian script were:

1. Slow down.: Seriously. If you do nothing else just slowing down will help a lot.
   
2. Think through every stroke. You need to make sure you have enough room to complete every letter and that all of your letters are roughly the same scale.
   
3. Practice everyday. Instead of writing "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" over and over again I copied famous passages and poems. Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, the lyrics to Aerosmith songs. Pick something that interests you and use that.
   
   Hope this helps.

This is a Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal, and my tracker is by Northbooks.

Picking the right journal is definitely a process of trial and error. There are actually a lot of variables to consider, and I haven't found one single notebook that covers all the things I want.

Some things to consider

• Paper thickness: for the most part, thicker paper = less show-through/ghosting (when you can see writing on the other side of the page) or bleeding (when your ink actually soaks through the paper). If you plan on using markers or anything other than a ball-point pen, I would suggest looking for 90-100 GSM weight paper. Moleskine is usually 70gsm and Leuchtturm is around 80gsm (which is my biggest gripe with this current notebook) and neither of them are great for ink-heavy journaling. I bought a HUSTLE notebook with 120gsm paper that seems really promising though... I'll have to update you once i've tested it out more thoroughly :)
  
  
• Binding: there are hardcover, softcover, ring binding, lay-flat binding, glued, stitched, etc, etc, etc. It's all personal preference so make sure you do your own research
  
  
• Paper color: white, off-white, ivory... Each has their pros/cons depending on what sort of ink you use, or if you'll be using a lot of color

Welcome to the hobby! Some perspective:

1. Newbies focus on the tools ("I need a calligraphy pen!")
   
2. Amateurs focus on the letterforms ("I need to know the proper strokes and construction")
   
3. Intermediates focus on regularity ("My spacing and angles need to be perfect")
   
   …I cannot claim to know what comes next as I'm not sure I have much claim to anything beyond amateur. But here are some especially nice books on the subject I have found helpful:
   
   

• Calligraphy A to Z by Stuart David
  
• The Calligrapher's Bible by David Harris

Oh good ol' Materials and Methods class...I just read this book. I didn't copy the damn thing! lol. Nice work.

I find these two books very useful for calligraphy styles:

The Calligrapher's Bible

The World Encyclopedia of Calligraphy

I've been working my way through "Hand Lettering" by Thy Doan.

Was pleased with this one!

I got mine from Amazon.

They have it in both simplified and traditional.

I recommend getting character practice paper with it.

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Pinyin-Blank-Paper/dp/1978063539/ref=mp_s_a_1_16?crid=7QCFORP2SRWX&keywords=mi+zi+ge&qid=1550609531&s=gateway&sprefix=mi+zi+&sr=8-16


This one looks like it has the diagonal lines judging from the picture.

I believe it is actually the Pentel Sign Pen . I have a single one in purple and the tips bends and looks exactly like this one does

Are you saying only novels are worth reading

I assume this is the book in question: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Hate-Cursive-Cartoons-Advanced/dp/1449478891/

Ever come across the book, Picture Cook? It'd be right up your alley.

https://www.amazon.com/Picture-Cook-See-Make-Eat/dp/1612432344

That thicc B reminds me of Brian Blomerths B that he uses in his signature.

Brian Blomerth's Bicycle Day https://www.amazon.com/dp/194486024X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1j6IDb5XB1MHS

I feel ya -- mediaeval Latin is hilarious when writers get inventive with vocabulary and grammar, but any more Augustine and I might cry. This is 'Winnie Ille Pu' translated by Alexander Lenard (I bought my copy used in a bookstore, but it's available here on Amazon). Have a go at the Latin versions of Harry Potter and The Hobbit as well!

I'm fine with the font, I'm just getting kind of irritated that I'm seeing people pass it off as their own almost every day at this point. It's from this book, which I think a lot of people got for Christmas: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Lettering-Beyond-Inspiring-techniques/dp/1600583970