Hi everyone, I’ve added a new page to the web site, on which I’m posting materials in Mathematics, starting with several geometric constructions discovered during a flurry of curiosity in late 2024 and early 2025. I hope you find its content interesting and delightful!
I’ve made a few recent changes.
As before, all my Buddhist-themed art works will continue to be available for free and unlimited reproduction and distribution under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
In late-June 2016 I started learning to play the cornetto. So there’s a new page on my web site (‘Music‘) where you can follow my slow learning in my online journal. So my printmaking hobby has kind of shifted to the background for now. more cornetto info
One forthcoming piece of Buddhist calligraphy will be Dhammapada 204 printed from a true woodcut. The Dhammapada is part of the Pāli Canon & is a collection of verses on various themes. It’s full of pithy material and many verses have a quirky, cranky quality. Each verse is 2-4 lines.
I’ll be carving it on this nice oblong piece of plywood, measuring 7.5cm wide by 63cm long.
The text will be in Pāli in rotunda gothic, which is a departure from my usual pointed pen writing. I’ve always liked that style, and its bold blocky letters won’t be dinimished by the presence of the striations and strong grain in this bit of wood.
The past couple days I carved a small sample woodcut (from birch plywood). It was not difficult, just time-consuming at approx. 40 minutes per rotunda gothic letter.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that thin curved lines are actually not so difficult to do with woodcut, but maybe not thin enough for Spencerian. This makes me think a bit beyond my earlier plan and consider baroque italic. The wood grain interferes with fine carving less than expected.
Query thru the contact page if you’re curious to see images.
Lately I’ve started to consider doing another Buddhist calligraphy print. Inspired by some of the very impressive work of the 15th century woodblock carvers, the idea of doing it as a true woodblock has great appeal! This seems especially appropriate since the earliest dated printed book was a Chinese print of the Diamond Sutra done from woodblocks.
Not feeling quite up to the challenge of doing a woodcut relief print in a pointed-pen style, the plan is to use one of the broad-edge pen hands.
Being a first attempt at wood carving, the content will probably be something pretty simple, maybe the 7 factors of awakening, or 8-fold path items, or a bit from the Dhammapada. I do want to include at least a little flourish- or scroll-work however. Much as I like Latin, this one seems better suited to Pāli.
As with all my Buddhist calligraphy pieces, this work will be for free distribution.
Once again, February’s calligraphy workshop is completely filled up! What a smart and talented group of 8 students showed up for it. And now there is even a waiting list for future workshops!
Hi everyone,
Welcome to the new web site of the Pointed Pen Club
This site will be a home for announcements of classes, workshops, news and views.
So what is this about? We promote the study and practice of the classic styles of pointed pen and narrow pen calligraphy. Some of these are Spencerian script, Spencerian ornamental, Vertical ornamental, English roundscript, engrosser’s script (a.k.a. copperplate). Also included would be various styles of baroque calligraphy such as italic, secretary hand (which historically were done with a narrow edge pen) and the arts of baroque flourishing and initials.
the Pointed Pen Calligraphy Club 