[Posted in the Nervousness Forums; there was great follow up, too.]
The best book i’ve found on caligraphy so far is _The Calligrapher’s Companion_ by Mary Noble and Janet Mehigan.
I’ll offer another opinion — i think learning with Speedball nibs in a nib holder is much better than with chisel tipped felt pens. You can get in bad habits with the felt tips, because they’ll move “backwards” across the paper in a way that the metal nibs won’t. And i have a bunch of the reservoir pens — Osmiroid, is a common brand — but find that i rarely use them.
One note — the best lesson i learned from TCC is to fill the pens with a brush and not to dip them. I’ve had much better results since. The basic black ink i use has an eyedropper — it’s perfect for filling the “dip” nibs.
I’ve drawn in ink off and on for a while and recently tried drawing with a dip pen with a drawing nib. I was thrilled with how much more comfortable i was with it than with Rapidograph pens. And it seems much easier to keep the nibs clean and not clogged.
If it’s “real” ink — and those Windsor and Newton inks are just fine — you don’t need to water it down. I’ve bought some acrylic inks and have found that i do need to water those down — experiment!
With the paper — i’ve found most sketchbook paper to work just fine. If you want to write on paper that you find out actually beeds — it’s too porus — you can use gum sandarac, a resin, to rub into the paper to keep the bleeding from happening. If you find the paper too slick, there’s something called Pounce (i think it’s pumice dust) to roughen it up a bit. (I use it to make sure the gum from erasing sketch lines is gone.)
I end up ordering most of my supplies by mail — Misterart.com was my last order of ink and nibs — because the craft and hobby and art supply stores here in *San Francisco* don’t have a wide enough selection in one place.
Hope this helps! I’ve just restarted calligraphy after years of being “too busy.”
Cheers,
feel free to ask more,
judith