Tip 4: Sitting Position
This is tip 4 of the 5 tips you must know about pointed pen calligraphy before you start writing. You’re seeing me because we’re talking about sitting position.
In the previous tips, we talked about the angle of the script and the need to align the pointed pen nib to this angle in order for us to write properly. In the last tip, we went through hand positioning, now we’ll talk about sitting position.
How I like to sit
When I’m sitting, I usually like to turn my body about 40-45 degrees toward my non writing side. This helps my writing forearm rested on top of the desk. Please remember: even though I’m resting my forearm on the desk, I’m not leaning weight onto the arm. This is very important! As a beginner, it may not be something that you think about. But as you keep pursuing the art of calligraphy, you want to make sure that you have the ability to do flourishing when you want to.
Why don’t you want to lean weight onto your arm?
If you lean your weight onto your writing arm, your arm will becoming too stuck to the table. This will interfere with the movement of your arm. So you want to make sure that you sit up straight, you’re leaning forward a little bit at the hips so that you can see what you’re doing. Your forearm is rested on the desk but it’s free enough for you to move as you need to.
Let’s put everything we’ve learned up to this point together!
First we’ll put our palm down on the desk, then tilt the hand up to about 40-45 degree angle. Gently close our fingers. We will place our pen into our hand, with the index finger on top. This ensures the majority of the back of our hand is facing up. Next we’ll turn our body toward our non-writing side to rest our writing forearm on the desk. If you’re left handed, you’ll turn your body to the right side to rest your left forearm on the desk.
And by resting on the desk, you want to make sure that your shoulder is relaxed, and your whole arm is relaxed onto the table, but you’re not leaning weight onto it. For my non-writing hand, I place it gently on top of the piece of paper that I’m writing on, so that I have some stability on the paper.
So in the next and last tip, we will be go through paper placement to put the final piece of the puzzle together in order to aim the angle of our nib to the angle of our script.
I hope you find this tip helpful. If you have any questions, please comment below or send me an email. And if you think someone else may find this helpful, please share with them my sign up link, so they can also receive my tips too! Thank you and until next time.
Previous tips:
Tip 1: Properties of Pointed Pen Letters
Tip 2: Properties of the Pointed Flexible Nib
Tip 3: How To Hold A Pointed Pen
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