Square One
Jul. 9th, 2009 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleribI feel like I should be taking notes. About calligraphy.
I've been mostly focused on one general research topic for the past few years: medieval music. I've been branching out a bit into medieval poetry as well. Ah, let's call it medieval performance. And I've gotten pretty deep in, to the point where I can just glance around and see all the unanswered questions I have, all the different routes to furthering my knowledge.
That can make it hard to remember what it's like to get started in a new field.
I've got my two beginner's books on calligraphy and my felt-tipped pens. If I were to try an A&S entry right now, my documentation would be something like, "And this is Unical, as described by Duffin and used in (some manuscripts). I'm using a felt-tipped pen because I'm still learning; a metal nib dip pen would be better, and a quill would be most appropriate." And my references would be two books.
Because what more can there be, right? "This is a period handwriting style, I've duplicated it, therefore this is period."
Of course there's more. There's layout and design and decoration (or lack of same). There are materials used. There are thousands of manuscript pages one could look through to learn... who knows what? Variations on technique or style? Methods of correcting errors?
I'm sure there's even more. But, having just barely scratched the surface of this art, I don't know enough to know what questions to ask! Which, in its way, is a positive. First, the trip itself, the "journey to knowledge," is fun and exciting in its own right, and I look forward to it. But second, if I "knew everything," I'd feel compelled to try and do everything, and paralyze.
Apprentices were not plonked down, lectured until they were stuffed full of lore, and set to work making masterpieces. They were given simple tasks, with explicit guidelines. When they mastered those, they could move on, and on, to more complex tasks and to understanding why the guidelines were the way they were. I'm at this apprentice stage, or even a pre-apprentice stage in which I'm learning the most basic skills an apprentice would need to do useful grunt work. It seems appropriate that the scholarship reflects that level of artistic involvement.
I've been mostly focused on one general research topic for the past few years: medieval music. I've been branching out a bit into medieval poetry as well. Ah, let's call it medieval performance. And I've gotten pretty deep in, to the point where I can just glance around and see all the unanswered questions I have, all the different routes to furthering my knowledge.
That can make it hard to remember what it's like to get started in a new field.
I've got my two beginner's books on calligraphy and my felt-tipped pens. If I were to try an A&S entry right now, my documentation would be something like, "And this is Unical, as described by Duffin and used in (some manuscripts). I'm using a felt-tipped pen because I'm still learning; a metal nib dip pen would be better, and a quill would be most appropriate." And my references would be two books.
Because what more can there be, right? "This is a period handwriting style, I've duplicated it, therefore this is period."
Of course there's more. There's layout and design and decoration (or lack of same). There are materials used. There are thousands of manuscript pages one could look through to learn... who knows what? Variations on technique or style? Methods of correcting errors?
I'm sure there's even more. But, having just barely scratched the surface of this art, I don't know enough to know what questions to ask! Which, in its way, is a positive. First, the trip itself, the "journey to knowledge," is fun and exciting in its own right, and I look forward to it. But second, if I "knew everything," I'd feel compelled to try and do everything, and paralyze.
Apprentices were not plonked down, lectured until they were stuffed full of lore, and set to work making masterpieces. They were given simple tasks, with explicit guidelines. When they mastered those, they could move on, and on, to more complex tasks and to understanding why the guidelines were the way they were. I'm at this apprentice stage, or even a pre-apprentice stage in which I'm learning the most basic skills an apprentice would need to do useful grunt work. It seems appropriate that the scholarship reflects that level of artistic involvement.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 05:18 pm (UTC)I just found a great book that gave me some beginner exercises to try that REALLY helped my hand as soon as I finished them. I will show it to you tonight (but I am not ready to loan it out again yet).
Speaking of learning in general, I find that progressing from interested to apprentice is relatively easy for me. I know how to find good basic information on just about everything. I have trouble progressing past basic skills into a higher knowledge/skill level (journeyman?).
What I do is, try to make my own exercises in improvement. What would a teacher want me to do here to improve. The hard part is coming up with the motivation to stick to it.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 05:56 pm (UTC)If it's not my bardic stuff, I tend to have very specific plateaus I'm reaching for. I don't want to be a calligrapher. I want to be able to do calligraphy just well enough to make convincing displays of my poetry and music. I don't want to be a weaver. I want to be able to make tablet woven bands just well enough to make authentic decorations for my garb.
"Just well enough" can be easy enough to get to. My tablet weaving is fairly even; passes the 10' rule, anyhow. Yeah, they're threaded-in designs. Yeah, I use a lot of cotton floss. I might upgrade the thread, but I'm not likely to start doing designs where I have to turn individual cards, even though that's more period. (There's what, *one* example of a threaded-in pattern?) And no matter how many more bands I weave... well, my technique might get better through practice, but there's no research going on. I know just enough about tablet weaving to get it done, and that's enough for me.
Could I do research into tablet weaving? Sure... but I don't want to. I don't want to be a weaver. If I try to make myself, I will have zero motivation.
I don't know how deep I'm going to want to go on calligraphy yet. I do think it's neat that I'm at exactly the same place as the folks who ask me, "But it's a period song and I sang it, so what else can I document?"
My overriding inspiration comes from bardic. Practice, exercises and research aren't hard to motivate, because it's what I love to do. I love to sit and play my instruments, and write poetry, and perform. It's no hardship to spend time doing that! (Although finding the time and keeping the kid away from the strings...!) Even these forays into other arts are largely motivated by that central thing. I want to do Anglo-Saxon performance, so I need to dress and look the part, so I'd better learn to sew a linen dress and put some trim on it. I want to have a better display for my text and music, so why don't I do it the way they did it? I *like* doing crafts, no mistake, but I don't have a passion for them the way I do for music.
It's easy(er) to follow the passion. Doing alphabets... not loving it so much. I'll do it, because it's getting me somewhere I want to go. But once I'm there, at "good enough," I may be content to coast, and I'll put my energies elsewhere.
I don't think there's anything wrong with this, as long as I know that's what I'm doing. If I were frustrated that my weaving "never got anywhere," then clearly I'd need a re-think. But I know I'm dabbling in a few fields while I mainly focus on one, and I'm okay with that.