Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The road not taken: ink & chocolate

Perhaps I should have known in Grade 5 that medicine was not my destiny. That was the year my teacher, Mrs. Paul, taught us cursive handwriting and my devotion to perfect penmanship was born. My penmanship is, in general, neat and organized (excluding when I have to scribble quickly, of course), a reflection of my obsessive-compulsive personality traits. If only I had a dollar for every time somebody said, "You can't be a doctor...your handwriting is too neat.".

Several years after Grade 5, I received a calligraphy set as a gift and taught myself rudimentary Italic and Gothic scripts, which led to a mild obsession with graphic design and typography (does anyone remember Letraset transfer fonts?). Soon, something I will loosely term "academic pressure" distracted me from any artistic pursuits and I followed the road more traveled. Two and a half years after leaving ophthalmology, I am now just beginning to retrace my steps towards a life which was once filled with burgeoning creativity and expression, through pastry and calligraphy. In fact, I hoped that taking calligraphy classes would improve my chocolate writing skills.

This weekend, I participated in a pointed pen calligraphy workshop with the Westcoast Calligraphy Society, taught by Gwen Weaver. Pointed pen techniques require delicate control over the pressure which is put on the pointy nib in order to achieve contrast between thick and thin lines. I am addicted.

Unfortunately, what I learned about pointed pen calligraphy does not translate to chocolate writing! Achieving the thick and thins with ink is mostly a function of the nib used and pressure applied. Chocolate writing, on the other hand, can only vary in thick and thinness depending on how fast or slow you write and to a certain extent, how hard you squeeze your paper cone. Shaping the tip of your paper cone to resemble a broad edge versus a fine tip can also allow some stylistic variation. Regardless, I need hours of more practice before perfecting either ink or chocolate calligraphy but at least with chocolate, all the mistakes are edible!

1 comment:

Manggy said...

I think it looks perfectly fine, Charmaine :) Although I'm not keen on the "f" letterform-- too easiy confused with a capital "P" for me.